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Dear Everyone I really must express my horror at the letter Clare has sent to everyone about military action on Iraq which she proposes to send to MPs. It is perfectly legitimate to try to express concern at trigger happy US diplomacy, but it is not right to twist the UN Charter to suggest that any enforcement action against Iraq would be an act of aggression. On the contrary, it would merely be enforcing the peace treaty signed by Iraq at the close of the war relating to Iraq's act of aggression towards Kuwait. More importantly, ikt is surely wrong for Clare to suggest we send letters which say that any military action against Iraq would justify the Iraqi people taking retaliatory action against our own countries. This suggests that if military action is taken to enforce UN resolutions and destry weapons of mass destruction, this would justify terrorist attacks against outr country. This is a disgraceful thing to suggest. The very reason we need to destroy Iraq's weapons capability is that its biological and chemical weapons could be used for just such terrorist attacks. As many of our parents work for the government, and we go to a university which could be a high profile terrorist target, I am very angry that anyone thinks that members of the CASI list want to sign a letter which, when read in future months after just such terrorist actions may have occurred, would seem to have been condoning them. Clare, I appreciate what you are trying to do and have a lot of sympathy with what you are saying, but please write a more restrained letter for people to put their names to. In the meantime, I urge everyone not to sign the letter in its present form. Best wishes Alan ************************** ALAN BATES Christ's College St. Andrew's Street Cambridge CB2 3BU Tel: 01223 767443 Mobile: 0966 167594 College Fax: 01223 334967 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html