Madam, - Vincent Browne's revisionism regarding the case for the war in Iraq does not stand up to scrutiny (Opinion, July 28th). The analogy he draws between shooting down a plane full of passengers in a 9/11 scenario and the loss of innocent lives in Iraq is not valid. There is virtual certainty of what is at stake in the plane scenario, while the war was essentially a gamble. Gambling with the potential death of thousands or tens of thousands of people can be justified only by the imminent threat of a much greater disaster.
Genocide had taken place in Iraq during Saddam's reign. There was no evidence, however, that it was taking place at the time of the war. Therefore there was no indication of an imminent disaster vast enough to justify the carnage unfolding in Iraq (or the potentially greater carnage which could have unfolded).
Mr Browne writes that predictions of "the scale of the disaster" in Iraq were "certainly wrong" and "hugely exaggerated". He should note that there has been no credible account of civilian casualties since the conflict began. Official figures of 12,000 are, as in Vietnam, likely to be a gross misrepresentation of actual deaths. A London-based health organisation named MEDACT gave an estimate in November 2003 of between 21,700 and 55,000 Iraqi dead. Its report also found "no evidence that humanitarian planning was given a fraction of the priority or funding that was given to military action".
Mr Browne asks if the US is "precluded for all time from doing what it thinks it needs to do to defend itself, because of the delinquency of previous administrations". What the US "thinks it needs to do", however, is not the same as what the US needs to do, or what it should do. What it ended up doing, as we now all know, was based on lies about WMD and connections with al-Qaeda. - Yours, etc.,
LIAM QUAIDE,
North Great Georges Street,
Dublin 1.