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Letters to the Editor:

Some questions to the PM

Dear Mr Howard

Unlike the British army which has complained about American 
military tactics, we have heard no words of criticism from 
Australia. Why is this? Do we not take the Geneva Convention and 
international law seriously?

The US military stands accused of using heavy machine guns, 
helicopter gunships and "daisy cutters" against civilians in 
lraq. Their tactics are indiscriminate, i.e. shoot first and ask 
questions later, if at all.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul McGeough in Bagdhad 
recently reported being threatened by the US military with being 
"blown away" and his driver was injured, even though he 
flourished his press pass.

Revelations have now become public of the barbarous treatment 
being meted out to Iraqi and other nationals jailed in Iraq and 
Guatanamo. Once again the same lame excuse is trotted out as was 
used to cover up the Indonesian military's orchestration of 
militia violence in East Timor viz rogue elements are 
responsible.

However, the tortures perpetrated by the US military are 
consistent with the violations of international humanitarian law 
which characterise US military operations on a daily basis as 
mentioned above.

Not only that, they are consistent with the CIA's Manual of 
Torture which was taught to Latin American militaries in the 
then School of the Americas at Fort Benning. A copy of this 
manual is held in the library of the Department of Foreign 
Affairs and Trade which is where I read it.

Our military support of the US military occupation of Iraq makes 
us complicit in crimes against humanity. Your government's 
uncritical knee-jerk reflex to send troops to Iraq has put all 
Australians at increased risk of terrorist attack and brought 
shame on our nation.

Will you now:

* Support calls for an international commission of enquiry into 
Iraq war crimes?
* Bring our troops home urgently?
* Demand immediate legal process in a civilian court for 
Australians held in Guantanamo? Finally, Senator Bob Brown 
alleges that your government has known for many months the 
allegations of torture by US military personnel. Is this true?

Gareth Smith
Byron Bay, NSW

The world will never, and must never erase a debt of gratitude 
owed to the Soviet people when Hitler invaded Russia in 1941.

Hitler's army, bred on the brutal rule of the swastika had 
brought France to its knees, occupied Belgium, Holland, Greece, 
invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland and seemed invincible.

This army left behind it the death camps, gallows and torture.

Hitler found the people of the Soviet Union tougher than the 
almighty dollar and the use of nuclear power.

The Nazi hordes were kept outside Leningrad, defeated at Moscow 
and degutted at Stalingrad.

Twenty two million Soviet people were killed in the invasion of a 
"Motherland Built by the People's Mighty Hand".

Hitler shot himself in an underground bunker in Berlin, the 
Italian people hung Il Duce Mussolini upside down with a bottle 
of castor oil and the Emperor Hirohito signed the peace treaty in 
1945, despised and hated in defeat.

While it is necessary for Communists to examine the causes of the 
present pro capitalist Duma in Russia, we remember the world was 
saved from the rule of the fascist dictatorships with the great 
Allied victories made possible by the heroism of the Soviet 
people.

Phyllis Johnson
Padstow, NSW

While our eyes are affixed to the situation that is now taking 
place in the Middle East, there is an impending humanitarian 
crisis that is about to take shape some 90 miles from the shores 
of Jamaica with our neighbours from the island of Cuba. Everyone, 
including CARICOM, seems to be distracted, oblivious of the new 
restrictions put in place by the USA to further cut hard currency 
inflows to Cuba, with the hope of crippling the Castro regime and 
inflict more hardship on the people of Cuba.

CARICOM and other international bodies need to be proactive in 
this situation and not be caught off guard as in the Haitian 
situation, which has caused an influx of Haitians into many 
Caribbean islands. It is the people of Cuba who must determine 
their destiny not President George W Bush.

A dangerous precedent has al-ready taken root whereby the USA now 
sees it fit to shape the agendas of sovereign nations. One is 
then forced to agree with the notion that it is he who is the 
most dangerous weapon of mass distraction and destruction (WMD).

Cuba has been a model society in terms of its education and 
health systems. While being ten times the size of Jamaica and 
operating on meagre resources, Cuba has managed to achieve 100 
percent literacy and has a life expectancy that is even higher 
than that of the USA. Their areas of science and biotechnology 
can compete with that of any developed nation.

As a Caribbean Community, we simply must not allow our neighbour 
to be destroyed any further because of George Bush's myopia and 
arrogance. CARICOM must become more than a talk shop and draw 
from the experience of the Cuban people's will and determination 
to progress despite the odds. Jamaicans must never feel that the 
situation that now obtains in Iraq, Haiti and Cuba can never 
reach our shores.

We must act with the urgency that this matter deserves and send a 
clear message, that starving a nation, cutting off their medical 
supplies and making life more onerous for the masses as a means 
of destabilising their government is cruel, vindictive and 
backward. But then one only has to take comfort in the fact that 
the mighty can also fall.

Mark A McKenzie
Kingston, Jamaica