Madam, - Peter Molloy asks (November 22nd): "Are we in the West being placed in jeopardy by media which are becoming a highly effective fifth column for international terrorism?" He claims that "there is a distinctly anti-Bush/Blair media bias".
The basic problem in Iraq is that, in the long term, the US cannot win. This is an objective reading of a conflict that is escalating week by week. As the memory of the Saddam regime fades, so the presence of a foreign army of occupation, which is totally alien in culture, comes into ever sharper focus. This situation can only deteriorate.
Those of us who opposed the invasion of Iraq did so for straightforward reasons. The justifications offered for invading Iraq - "WMDs" and links to Al-Qaeda - were clearly spurious. Two points arose from that. Firstly, nothing could be better designed to play into the hands of the terrorists than a Western invasion of an Islamic country. And secondly, if the US could legitimise a war of aggression once on bogus grounds, what was to stop it doing so again, and what might be the consequences?
The Americans are now hoisted on their own petard. If they stay in Iraq the situation will continue to deteriorate; if they leave, their departure may well soon be followed by the descent of Iraq into civil war, from which may emerge an Islamic or other "rogue" state - even if it doesn't, a civil war would disrupt the all-important flow of Iraqi oil.
Not only that, but a terrorist defeat of the US would be a tremendous coup for the terrorists. The media did not create this situation, and pretending it is not happening is a political approach favoured only by the ostrich. - Yours, etc.,
SEAN SWAN, Belfast 10.