Madam, - I was alarmed to read your paper's "Fund for Ireland Payment Restored ". Not the content, you understand, more the lack of it.
While reputable Northern Ireland tabloids made reference to the alarming comments of New York Congressman Jim Walsh, that the House should restore the fund to $25 million dollars a year (up from a proposed cut to $8 million) to show support for the Taoiseach for "keeping open" Shannon for the US military forces, this was not deemed newsworthy by your paper.
Surely this act has answered a question many of your readers asked recently - what price Irish neutrality? The answer is $17 million dollars it would appear. - Yours, etc.,
MARK BRENNAN, Omagh, Tyrone.
Madam, - Today the invasion of Iraq was brought home vividly by one of the "Irish" British tabloids. A full colour photograph of a seven-year-old girl lying on a mortuary tray numbed the senses. At her feet the body of a younger sibling. Both had just finished breakfast and were enjoying the early morning sun. Liberation "coalition of the willing" style, arrived. I will never eat breakfast again. A penance that might help to wash away the guilt, cleanse the hands of the blood of this young fellow human being, my sister.
I was unable to wade through the piece by John Waters. I cursed the English language. No other language has the flexibility that allows words to be fashioned so that whatever conclusion or meaning is desired can be arrived at regardless. Good wordsmiths can sell anything. The English language robs truth with ease. The camera, on the other hand, has no such powers. What you see is what you get.
John's logic is that this invasion is necessary in order to preserve the western, English-speaking, white-skin way of life. If we are to survive, then the nation of Islam must be enslaved or destroyed. This is the reasoning of the damned. God help us all. - Yours, etc.,
JIM O'SULLIVAN, Rathedmond, Sligo.
Madam, - The image of Russian tanks being used to repress Hungarians in Budapest in 1956 is now an icon that will forever sum up the evils of Soviet Communism. Likewise the image of tanks being used to crush the students in Tiananmen Square illustrated vividly the sham of Chinese communism. Now, surely, the sight of American tanks harassing the civilians of Iraq will tarnish forever the much vaunted virtues of western democracy. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL O'FLANAGAN, Emmet Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8.
Madam, - Like Senator David Norris, I'm not great at arithmetic either,especially when it comes to the maths of moral superiority. So I wonder, in the light of the claim that to take a "moral position" on Shannon means the Irish people will have made a significant contribution to alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi people, could I ask Senator Norris, and those who think like him, the following question: How many Iraqi men, women and children dead at the hands of Saddam Hussein equals a clear Irish conscience? - Yours, etc.,
CAROL STEPHENSON, Rowanbyrn, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Madam, - My daughters are frustrated with the current fashions for young women. A full-page advertisement in one of their magazines calls upon young ladies to buy and wear "cool camouflage" fashion which features not only dress, tops, "combat" trousers but also bags, shoes , boots and accessories - all designed as military dress. Shops catering for teenagers are filled with this "cool camouflage" clothing .
It is a callous and sick society where designers and fashion outlets are profiteering from the genocide of the Iraqi people and in the process are creating a teenage world where it's cool to adopt military dress whereby an unknowing and unsuspecting teenagers are flaunting the apparel of war.
This is commercialism and exploitation at its worst and most pernicious. - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN BUTLER, Pennock Hill, Swords , Co Dublin.
Madam, - "My God, why have you forsaken us?", wrote a lieutenant in the Battle of Stalingrad. "We have fought during 15 days for a single house, with mortars, grenades, machine-guns, and bayonets. Already by the third day fifty four corpses lay strewn in the cellars, on the landings and the staircases. The front is a corridor between burned-out rooms; it is the thin ceiling between two floors. Help comes from neighbouring houses by fire escapes and chimneys.
"There is a ceaseless struggle from noon to night. From storey to storey, faces black with sweat, we bombard each other with grenades in the middle of explosions, clouds of dust and smoke, heaps of mortar, floods of blood, fragments of furniture and human beings. Ask any soldier what half an hour of hand-to-hand struggle means in such a fight. And imagine Stalingrad; 80 days and 80 nights of hand-to-hand struggles. The street is no longer measured by metres but by corpses." How do we want the streets of Baghdad to be measured? - Yours etc.,
FACHTNA O'REILLY, Model Farm Road, Cork.
Madam, - I can't help wonder how many Timothy Mc Veighs the cradle of civilisation has given birth to in the last two weeks? - Yours, etc.,
BRIAN COSTELLO, Beech Drive, Dundrum, Dublin.