YOUR correspondent N Bliss, in his reply published last week to my letter about war, has misunderstood the point I was making.

First, a claim that war is wrong DOES imply that the status quo is better. Such a claim quite clearly states that war will make the situation worse, therefore those who were against war in Iraq would prefer Saddam Hussein still to be in power.

This preference does not mean that anti-war protestors happily support evil regimes. I have no doubt that they want rid of evil and repressive governments around the world.

Furthermore, I totally agree with the best case scenario N Bliss puts forward. It would have been far better if, instead of war, Saddam Hussein could have been overthrown by the Iraqi people. But the point is the Iraqi people could not achieve this.

Thus there were two possibilities - war removing the regime or its continuance until a time when the Iraqi people had the capability to remove it. Who knows when that would have been? In these circumstances, being against war meant allowing the regime to continue. This I consider the wrong choice.

Secondly, the fact that the US or UK's stated war aim was not to overthrow Saddam Hussein is irrelevant to the rights and wrongs of the war. It is end results that are important, not motives. Good ends have often arisen from less good motivations.

Likewise, to bring up the (in my opinion exaggerated) 'evils' of the current American regime is, again, irrelevant to the question at hand, however important in other discussions.

I believe that the US and UK will do their best to create a stable, democratic order, not least because it is in their best interests to do so. However, whichever way the future may develop, it is hard to envisage a regime coming to power that proves itself to be more evil or causes more suffering than Saddam Hussein's. And it is this that means that the Iraq war is justifiable.

Andrew Dinsdale, Lancaster University.