HAVING watched the entire first session of the Defence Select Committee's inquiry into the implications of independence your headline, "Independent Scotland vulnerable to 9/11 attack" (The Herald, July 4), is rather misleading.

First and most obviously, having more modern fighters than all the other nations of the world put together did not stop the US being the target of a successful attack. Secondly, according to the United States Air Force, despite operational changes, the US is still vulnerable to future 9/11-type attacks.

Thirdly and most importantly, one must consider what makes a country vulnerable to a 9/11 type attack. Thankfully, we can once again turn to the United States Air Force, or more specifically, a former lecturer at the USAF University, Dr Robert Pape. In his book, Dying to Win, Dr Pape and his colleagues conducted an analysis of more than 315 suicide attacks involving 462 suicide bombers (all died) and their organisations and discovered that a key driver of the 462 (more than 50% of whom, interestingly, belonged to secular organisations) was the presence of foreign troops in their country. Moreover, when the troops departed, recruitment to the terrorist organisations went down correspondingly.

The answer is to stop participating in other people's expeditionary wars – the very role that the UK armed forces are being configured to overtake during the coming decades and that I trust, an independent Scotland would decline to participate in.

Your sub-headline, "Expert says country can't afford top aircraft", was a quote from Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), an organisation that is still yet to conclude that we have lost our fourth and Nato's first Afghan War.

Predictably none of the members of the committee members asked the fundamental question in this regard: How relevant would the purchase of "top aircraft" be to the national security needs of an independent Scotland? On the other hand there was unanimity that there would be no dogfights over the skies of Scotland or the Remaining UK as they termed it, for, at least decades, possibly centuries, to come.

Bill Ramsay,

84 Albert Avenue,

Glasgow.

THE claim by Prof Chalmers of Rusi that Scotland could not defend against a 9/11 attack sounds serious until the facts are considered. Had Prof Chalmers actually studied the timeline of the 9/11 attack he would realise that England and especially London is at far more risk of attack. The actual speed of the interceptors is academic, as the time between establishing an airliner is under terrorist control and the actual impact is very small. Also the chain of command to allow the interceptors to have permission to fire is complex. With Heathrow's landing flight paths going directly across London, the actual warning of an attack could be measured in seconds, far too little time to task Typhoons to intercept.

The best way to prevent 9/11-style attacks is not to be a target. The Westminster Government with its imperial ambitions, interference in other countries' affairs and general ability to upset other regimes is more at risk than a Scottish Government which takes a co-operative approach and works and trades with other countries.

Prof Chalmers has to put the Unionist case to ensure that Scotland continues to contribute around £3.5bn to the overspending UK defence industry, without which Rusi would be an insignificant organisation.

Bruce D Skivington,

8 Pairc a Ghliob,

Strath, Gairloch.

BETTER together? Are we? If we had a broader government coalition in Westminster of Tory /Lib-Dem and Labour would we be better, not just better off? Would bankers behave better and cuts turn into better growth and students graduating this summer find better work other than an 11-hour contract with a supermarket (this is an actual event)?

Better Together is a sloppy slogan borrowed from the Tory "We're all in this together". But clearly we are together in very little. Many of us live a life that is not "together" with that of Bob Diamond or indeed Alistair Darling. Were Mr Darling, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair better together when the Libor deals were being hatched?

Checks and balances might produce some cultural change (Editorial, The Herald, July 3), but will regulatory rigour and transparency help to bring the public, big business and politicians together? Will our society be better?

Better together is a facile yet sleekit slogan suggesting a sense of community in a society riven with complex contradictions, of which the banking crisis is a mere sample.

Thom Cross,

64 Market Place,

Carluke.

ANDREW McKie tells us that the UK has the longest tax code in the world, running to almost 18,000 pages ( "Let the law deal with the spivs fixing lending rates, " The Herald, July 2).

I wonder what kind of tax code Mr Salmond foresees for an independent Scotland? This is not just a question of how we will administer the assessment and collection of tax, or the setting of tax rates. It is a matter of setting up the whole framework of rules and regulations which constitute the tax code.

Would we simply adopt the UK tax code and incorporate it into our own legal framework? Would we not want to scrap it and start again from scratch? Surely the present system, with all its complications and its loopholes, needs to be altered and improved, but this would be an enormous task for MSPs and their civil servants. Then, having set up the new system, we would need to have an annual Scottish Finance Bill introducing changes. The procedures for this could be similar to the annual procedures at Westminster, but gradually, as the years go by, the two tax codes will drift apart, no doubt creating new anomalies and new loopholes.

This is one of the "nuts and bolts" questions which need to be answered in the debate about independence. How will it work in practice? Will it not lead to many complications and a great deal of duplicated cost?

David Arthur,

The Cedars, Colinton, Edinburgh.