Iraq would still be a hell if the allies had not invaded in 2003

In fact the weapons used to shower chemical agents on Halabja were almost all Russian and the precursor chemicals used in the production of the agents came mainly from companies based in Singapore and the Netherlands. But those precursors still had to be turned into chemical weapons, which then had to be loaded into bombs and slung under aircraft crewed by officers who obeyed their orders. Saddam was to blame for Halabja, and others who may have been involved early in the supply chain bear about as much responsibility as the shopkeeper who sells alcohol to the man who later gets in his car, drunk, and runs down a pedestrian.

It's all very well lamenting the grievous state of Iraq in the 1980s and 90s, but if nothing had been done Saddam or one of his psychopathic sons would still be in power and the people of Iraq would still be living in hell. Iraq has many problems, but things are a lot better than they were. In the north, the Kurdish area, the economy is booming and security is good; in the south, too, there's a measure of stability. Those areas were protected from some of the worst severities of Saddam by a no-fly zone, which prevented air assaults of the type seen in Halabja. It was mainly British and US aircraft that enforced those zones and they had no explicit UN authorisation.

Mr Minogue laments the fact that "successive UK governments continue to support despots". While I have some sympathy with that view, it is too simplistic. The UK has a good record over the past 20 years in its dealings with unsavoury regimes, of which there are many in the world. We have been at the forefront in imposing sanctions where they might help, as with Burma. But often it's better to engage with a regime and work for change, rather than isolate it – which very rarely helps the people who live under it.

Doug Maughan,

52 Menteith View,

Dunblane.

LIFTING sanctions has been used as a supposed justification for the Iraq war. Those sanctions could have been lifted at any time without invading Iraq.

Saddam couldn't even defeat Iran in the 1980s with almost the entire world's governments supporting him with arms, funding, intelligence and political support. He showed in the 1991 war that he didn't dare use chemical weapons once the US was his enemy. He could only massacre Shia rebels in the south because George Bush senior ordered his troops not to intervene.

Dennis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck, two successive heads of the sanctions programme who resigned in protest, said it was not Saddam's regime causing the starvation, but that the sanctions imposed a limit on oil sales too low to support Iraq's population; both opposed the war.

After Iraq was "liberated" billions disappeared from Iraq's UN Oil for Food fund and, due to corruption and the refugees created by coalition assaults and sectarian fighting, hunger became a worse problem even than under sanctions.

Human Rights Watch found coalition forces under US command carried out "a tacit policy" of torture of Iraqis. The same US military trainers who trained the death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s were employed to train Iraqi equivalents such as the Police Commandos. The Police Commandos and other US-trained paramilitary death squads like the Iraq Special Operations Forces have continued torturing and summarily executing Iraqis, as well as being notorious for kidnapping and torturing people simply for ransom money from their families.

Amnesty International reports detailed torture methods used by Iraqi government forces include beatings, electrocution, suspending by arms from the ceiling, rape and pulling out nails; the same methods used under Saddam.

So much for the invasion being aimed at protecting or aiding the Iraqi people; and this was all entirely predictable and predicted by opponents of the war who pointed out that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had been in the Reagan administration when it backed death squads in the Americas in the 1980s.

Duncan McFarlane,

Beanshields,

Braidwood,

Carluke.

It was wrong for the UK and United States to arm the fascist Ba'ath regime to invade its neighbours and slaughter its own citizens, and the best way to put that right was to disarm his regime and remove it from power.

In 2003, the invasion of Iraq was one of three options to deal with the fascist crime family which was defying numerous UN resolutions relating to its internal and external conduct. The second option was to continue the "slow genocide" of sanctions and the farce of weapons inspection (as favoured by Robin Cook). The final option was to dismantle sanctions and inspections, and effectively to reward Saddam Hussein for his lawlessness, genocide, torture and aggression (as favoured by George Galloway).

Continued sanctions killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children? Or rewarding a fascist regime headed by a Caligula-like pyschopath? Ten years later, we have yet to hear from opponents of the war which of these alternative options they would have favoured.

Peter A Russell,

87 Munro Road,

Jordanhill,

Glasgow.

The photograph accompanying your Letters Special (March 12) on the Iraq war was captioned: "Anti-war protesters in George Square, Glasgow, in 2003". The photo was actually from the protest march against the first Gulf War in January 1991.

I know this for certain because my wife Karri and I are in the photo. We stayed in Glasgow from 1990 to 1992.

Joseph R Falcone,

431 Myrtle Street,

Half Moon Bay, California.