Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has issued a shrill document about the atrocities committed under the present Iraq regime.

I have no doubt this is true, although Amnesty immediately criticised it as unbalanced and selective. It is such a crude attempt to increase war fever.

Why are we servile to the USA? This was not "on the agenda". The present US administration is far right, neglectful of the environment, and of human rights, except in Iraq, and unduly influenced by a vast arms industry, with the people at the centre of it slobbering and lusting for war.

I refer to the Rumsfelt-Cheney-Rice trio, recently described in the House as the three witches.

I find them disgusting.

There is something mysterious, and perhaps only to be discovered by later historians, about Tony Blair's submission to the US, out-reaching Mrs Thatcher. His leadership has given us the wrong kind of Tory government. It is not what Labour voters wanted.

There should be no war with Iraq until its necessity has been patently shown, but there are signs that America is straining at the leash. We should not have the UK, and Yorkshire in particular, used to defend the US at our risk.

We should make our own arrangements against terrorism, some more diplomatic than the US allows.

Roy Stevens,

Willow Bank,

New Earswick,

York.

...FOR Jack Straw and his spineless collaborators within New Labour to express dismay over human rights violations in Iraq is beyond contempt.

Where are their concerns for the thousands of amputees in Saudi Arabia or the victims of Israeli apartheid?

During the Iran-Iraq war when Saddam Hussein's cruelties were at their peak, the Labour party in Opposition approved Britain's part in assembling the largest naval force in history for his defence.

The real impetus to Jack Straw's sudden conscience is the call of another servile murder job.

So, fresh from the open abattoir of Afghanistan, British troops and installations must be donated to the next phase of Bush's war on justice.

Only three nations on earth have openly stated their willingness to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, Israel, the US and the UK - all three within the last 12 months.

Two of these were involved in "the worst terrorist atrocity of all time" when the civilian populations of two Japanese cities were liquidated.

How ironic and insane that these same nations now accuse Iraq of hiding that which they so obscenely flaunt.

Roger Westmoreland,

The Oval,

Pocklington, York.

Updated: 11:01 Thursday, December 12, 2002