Madam, - The current situation in Uzbekistan provides disturbing reading and highlights the hypocrisy at work in the "War on Terror". Mr Bush continues to harp on about his crusade for democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere but is quite willing to have suspects - who have probably been initially arrested using coerced evidence - handed over for interrogation to a regime that has no respect for human rights. The reaction from Washington to the latest killings says it all: it urges restraint. The US can't be seen to upset the Uzbek leader when there is an important US air base to be supported.
When George Orwell wrote 1984 he envisaged a repressive totalitarian state based on the then Soviet Union. "Double speak" was the term he used to describe how Big Brother twisted language to hide the truth. How sad and ironic it is to see the USA, a state once seen as the standard bearer for democracy, reduced to using terms such as "rendition program" for its policy of handing over suspects to known torturer regimes so it doesn't have to get its hands dirty. - Yours etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Blackrock,
Cork.