Perspective PS

Brian Wilson is correct to highlight Saddam’s murder-

ous regime, the Kurds’ gratitude for the UK’S role in his overthrow and the tragedy of the Marsh Arabs, whose millennia-old unique habitat he deliberately destroyed (Perspective, 9 July).

As well as the disbanding of all the local security structures which he rightly condemns, he might also have referred to other aspects of the regime and its demise which the Chilcot Report seems to have ignored: that Saddam’s generals largely believed he did have WMDS; that his two sons and likely successors were probably even worse than he was; that there was no Mandela or Tutu to take over in Iraq; and that direct immediate responsibility for the post-2003 mayhem lay with Moqtadar alsadr and his followers, who as Shias had just been liberated from Sunni domination but showed absolutely no recognition, let alone cooperation in or gratitude for, the US/UK action.

In addition, Saddam’s war against Iran is estimated to have cost more than one million deaths, plus more disabled and more displaced.

And those who would retort that the West in general supported his secular regime against Iran’s theocracy, should recall our support for Stalin after June 1941, despite Stalin’s alliance with Hitler in their joint rape of Poland in September 1939, and without which Stalin himself might not have survived.

Realpolitik can force nearimpossible choices on democracies. JOHN BIRKETT Horseleys Park

St Andrews