I NOTICE from Your Letters (Feb 4) that Derek Boden is distancing himself from his government on the issue of Iraq (USA is more of a threat than Iraq).

He is entirely right to do this and millions of people in this country and the US will share the view that any attack on a sovereign nation which is not attacking, or threatening to attack, us is unjust, cowardly and against all tenets of international law.

If the UN weapons inspectors were to find "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, it would be hailed by Bush, Blair and Rumsfeld as proof that they had them all along. If not, they would regard it as proof that the Iraqis were hiding them! The absurdity of this reasoning can be summed up as Catch 22, a no-win situation for Iraq. Why, I wonder, are the inspectors not in India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Britain, France and the United States, which all have these weapons? In fact, the only nation to have used them is the United States itself!

Blair's pathetic, and mistaken, policy of "America, right or wrong" will not be in Britain's best interests in the long term. America will act in its own interests, not ours.

In the two great wars of the twentieth century, when Britain's very existence was threatened, the US did not intervene until they themselves had been attacked. Bush's eight supporters in Europe simply want to be on the winning side, or perhaps to share in the improved oil supplies flowing from the Iraqi wells following the "glorious victory".

I remain absolutely opposed to any attack on a sovereign nation not engaged in aggressive war and, as an ex-serviceman, am ashamed for my country. Whether such action is sanctioned by a cowed United Nations or not it is still an immoral act which could result in world chaos and conflict.

JACK SHAW