Letters: Iraq occupation

Nothing will improve in Iraq until our illegal occupation ends

Sir: I've been refreshed and encouraged by your honest reporting on Iraq, and the resolute anti-war stance your paper has taken. But your bizarre leading article "British and US interests are still fatally entwined" (6 February), appears to be as wilfully blind to the root cause of the whole nightmare as most other newspapers, and the war's main protagonists, appear to be.

The obvious fundamental reason why the mayhem in Iraq has no chance of abating is because of the illegal occupation by the Americans and British. Outside the bunkers in Washington and Downing Street, and apparently the editorial offices of some British and American newspapers, there's nearly no one who still believes the Americans and British have any business, or moral authority, in Iraq. British and Americans concerned with cleaning up the mess they made - rather than be suspected of yet more noble rhetoric covering up self-serving ulterior motives - should recognise this as their first point of call.

The inevitable consequence from doing this is the realisation that nothing can get better in Iraq until the Americans and British stop occupying the place. This means one of two things: either get out as soon as possible, and let Iraq sort out its bloody civil war without outsiders stirring the pot and undermining the authority of Iraq forces; or better, but much harder, ask for help.

This means gradually withdrawing troops while seeking diplomatic help and military support for Iraqi forces from neighbouring countries and the UN. And pay billions, perhaps the same amount as US and the UK have poured into this misguided war until now, to facilitate this, and in reconstruction fees.

PAUL TINGEN

SIGOULES, FRANCE

Special relationship with the school bully

Sir: Tony Blair confuses influence born of benign foreign policy with coercion based upon military might ("Blair's defence of special relationship", 7 February).

His Valentine's Day card to George Bush includes a particularly telling point: that Britain should not give up the close relationship with the US "in any set of circumstances". Can we therefore assume that, once Bush's End-Timer advisers have approved the inevitable strike on Iran, our Prime Minister will follow suit? When the crisis worsens, will Blair continue meekly to bow to his White House master's voice no matter how illegal, dangerous and even potentially apocalyptic the outcome?

Blair's argument for a "special relationship" that is now absurdly one-sided recalls a cringing schoolboy throwing in his lot with the playground bully in return for a spurious assurance of immunity. Far from opening doors, Bush's America unconditionally kicks them in, its "influence" predicated upon economics and firepower.

For a PM apparently so wedded to "legacy", is it really beyond his wit that Bush's growing status as history's most universally despised US President will ultimately be mirrored by that of an equally culpable UK counterpart?

RICHARD BUTTERWORTH

LONDON N13

Sir: I was interested to read of the Prime Minister's defence of his interpretation of the "special relationship" with the USA. I wonder why he failed to use his influence with the President to fast-track the release of the cockpit recording of the "friendly fire" incident which led to the death of Corporal-of-Horse Matty Hull.

He could have said something like: "Look, George, Britain considers me a pretty straight kind of guy, and I worry that this apparent cover-up reflects badly on your military's honourable history, not to mention my reputation vis-à-vis peerages.

"We are special friends, aren't we? You were ever so pleased to show such recordings during the invasion of Iraq when we had a really good time bombing buildings and Iraqi troops, and there isn't much difference, is there? The disputed video still shows the wonderful technology of American weaponry and how accurate it is.

"I know the pilots were reservists, but weren't you one once? You must be able to vouch for how well-trained they would have been for combat conditions, and how the confusion of war might have made them blind to clearly marked coalition vehicles."

Maybe not.

D J WALKER

MACCLESFIELD, CHESHIRE

Sir: With reference to Tony Blair's claim that the relationship with America opens doors. Could it be suggested that what he actually meant was that from the start, he realised the benefit would be greatest to the Blairs after his days as PM?

WILLIAM GREENWOOD

BLACKPOOL

Search for vectors of bird flu virus

Sir: Dr Caroline Lucas's letter, "Bird flu and intensive farms" (7 February) rightly points out that we don't know "the proximate cause of this outbreak". But her insistence that intensive poultry production could be the cause of H5N1 flu lacks evidence.

Crowded poultry populations will make any infection spread more rapidly, especially because the inbred populations used will be less resistant to any disease. If one turkey or chicken is susceptible all are likely to be, so factory farming will suffer most when an infection does come.

But as a biologist, I wish to point out that the current H5N1 virus has caused disease mainly in more genetically diverse birds living in smallholdings where they have close contact with wild birds as well as with other livestock, and people too. Some ducks can carry H5N1 influenza without becoming very sick, so they may move it between smallholdings.

The likely origin of H5N1 is in South-east Asia, where various bird flu viruses do move around and evolve in this sort of environment. There, or in Africa, the major risk may well be that domestic mammals, cats perhaps, catch this virus, where it can evolve the capacity to spread within a mammalian rather than an avian environment, preadapting it to humanity. There is also some evidence that pigs can contract and spread the H5N1 virus, as probably happened in 1918.

The precise vectors and victims with H5N1 are closely related, but not yet clear.

DR JOHN GODFREY

LONDON NW5

Sir: Many of the recent nightmarish visions of British farming portrayed in the media are fortunately just that, a bad dream.

The chances of poultry picking up the avian influenza virus are actually rather higher in extensive, outdoor systems, where domestic poultry are more likely to come into contact with wild birds carrying the virus. Likewise, the chances of humans contracting the disease are greatest in the sort of peasant-farming economies where people and poultry live cheek by jowl.

More and more farmland is being put into environmental management, the length of hedgerows is increasing, more trees are being planted, farmland bird numbers have stabilised and otters are staging a remarkable comeback. Farmers and growers are doing all of this at the same time as meeting an increasing demand both for commodity foods and for local and niche products, as well as supplying the rapidly developing new markets for sustainable bioenergy that are so important in the battle against climate change.

Intensive livestock systems are a necessary element in the mix, if we are to meet the demand for affordable meat products without bringing millions more hectares of forest and natural areas into cultivation across the world. But that does not mean that animal welfare need be compromised.

PETER KENDALL

PRESIDENT NATIONAL FARMERS UNION STONELEIGH, WARWICKSHIRE

NHS policy the wrong way round

Sir: I take issue with some of the points raised in the article "A surgical solution" (6 February). Operations in our NHS hospitals, (or "palaces of disease," as your editorial calls them), in this day and age do not "inevitably require a lengthy stay in hospital" (unless the complexity of the surgery requires it).

Nearly all NHS hospitals have busy day-case units devoted to discharge of patients on the day of surgery. To set up multiple units in local health centres and cottage hospitals will not only be very expensive, but is merely duplicating services.

At the same time as advocating local day surgery centres, the Government is recommending the nationwide closure of many local maternity and accident and emergency units, in favour of large, centralised facilities.

So while simple elective surgical procedures may be accessed nearer home, emergency care will be moving even further away. Surely this is the wrong way round.

DR ROBERT PAUL

ANAESTHETIST MILTON KEYNES GENERAL HOSPITAL

Gentle sadness on the German railways

Sir: In contrast to Anna Giddings' confrontation with a First Great Western jobsworth (Letters, 7 February), last summer my wife and I travelled by train from Düsseldorf to Cologne. By mistake, we climbed aboard a German ICE express, for which a supplementary fee and seat reservation are requirements.

When the ticket inspector on the train looked at our tickets, he shook his head sadly, asked us where we were going, and wished us a very pleasant trip. His gentle admonitions were all delivered in impeccable English and without imposing a (justifiable) penalty payment. Perhaps First Great Western should send their staff on customer relations courses with Deutsche Bahn.

DR ROY TIPPING

BLUNHAM BEDFORDSHIRE

It's grim up North, but we can take it

Sir: I have been horrified to learn of the unprecedented disruption and dislocation to travel experienced by your readers in the Home Counties.

Here in Leeds, we have just lived through our harshest winter since 1995. The snow never stopped falling for more than two hours but the people managed to pull through, thanks to the grim stoicism for which the area is renowned.

We are thankful for the regular weather bulletins, from the BBC among others, warning us of our impending doom, warnings without which we would have been totally unprepared for such distressing conditions and might even have been late for work.

Our thoughts go out to the victims of this terrible natural disaster called winter and your southern readers can rest assured that, should the need arise in future, we in the North shall extend our most heartfelt sympathies in their direction.

ERIC CHADWICK

LEEDS

Sir: Temporarily, could the great British public stop moaning about 4x4s? Just while there's snow on the ground. Could that be agreed?

TERRY EATON

MILTON-UNDER-WYCHWOOD, OXFORDSHIRE

Lennon lodger doubts affair

Sir: I was intrigued to read the review by John Walsh of Imagine This: Growing Up with my Brother John Lennon by Julia Baird (6 February), in particular at the suggestion that Lennon's Aunt Mimi had a prolonged affair with a lodger in his 20s.

In 1955, as a first-year medical student at Liverpool University, I lodged with Auntie Mimi in Menlove Avenue. John was about 14 and also living there. There were two other lodgers, a 20-year-old chemistry student and Mike, a research biochemist who was in his 20s.

The latter had been a lodger since his first year and, according to Mimi, had been friendly with Mimi's husband George. They apparently spent some time together visiting the local pubs. George died the year before I arrived in Liverpool.

While I was living there, I saw no evidence whatsoever of a romantic attachment between Mimi and Mike or anybody else. It is, of course, possible that a liaison developed after I moved on the following year to different digs. Mike certainly continued to lodge there for a few years more.

With so many people living in the house it is difficult to believe any sort of prolonged affair remaining undetected. It is difficult to imagine Mimi in this role: harridan she certainly was, sexual predator, I doubt.

CLIVE PROBERT

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

Chamber of cronies

Sir: With peers to be chosen by election (from party lists) and appointment by party leaders, how exactly is the reformed upper chamber supposed to fulfill its constitutional role of preventing populist governments enacting foolhardy legislation? The present proposals embed cronyism even deeper into the structure of Parliament.

RICHARD MARR

LONDON W3

In memoriam

Sir: I am sure that the descendents of the 264 miners entombed in the Gresford colliery disaster would be interested to read Miles Kington declaring that Gresford has "no great claim to fame, except that its church had a fine peal of bells" (6 February). No doubt those bells were tolling on that day in 1934, and if MK is as old as he looks, he would have been brought up with that still-fresh memory. My father-in-law died in a pit accident in the 1960s; we don't forget things like this in Wales.

MARY UZZELL EDWARDS

RHIWFAWR, SWANSEA

Hell has a use

Sir: Why is it that Muslims telling Muslims that the rest of us will burn in hell (Johann Hari, 8 February) is such a problem? It does not mean the rest of us will go to hell. It is just a device to stop their members from defecting. They are not the first to use it and will not be the last.

VAL SMALLEY

LEICESTER

Drop-kicked

Sir: It wasn't just the rugby union people who were vindictive ("Vicious snobbery of rugby's past", letter, 7 February ). In the 1950s, as a trainee journalist, local athlete and amateur rugby league player, I was sent to cover the arrival of E McDonald Bailey, the Trinidadian sprinter, who had signed for Leigh Rugby League Club. I sat through the game, explaining the rules to him, dined with him and wrote my feature. I was promptly banned by both the Amateur Athletic Association and the local Rugby League authority for "being a professional".

KEN ASHTON

PRESTATYN

Just the job

Sir: "Tories accuse minister of hypocrisy over health cuts" (Independent headline, 7 February). Minister for hypocrisy? There must have been a lot of applicants for that particular government post.

MIKE SHEARING

GUIZHOU PROVINCE, CHINA

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