IT is a testament to the brain-washing power of the media that in respect of the governance of Iraq Libya and Syria contributors to the Letters Pages will ask the question “where have all the good men gone?” (Letters, October 15 & 18). In most cases they have been assassinated.

Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq were the good men. They had the support of the majority of their countrymen and their countries were essentially stable and relatively prosperous as was Syria under Bashar al-Assad before foreign mercenaries arrived on the scene. Even the most disinterested observer must admit that the lives of the ordinary citizens of these countries have been ruined by recent conflicts started by outsiders on the pretext of removing “tyrants” and introducing “democracy”. The major fault that these “good men” had was that they would not bend the knee and do what they were told by outsiders.

If one wants to look for a reason that good men cannot be found perhaps one needs look no further than the country that since its creation in 1776 has been at war somewhere in the world for 223 of the intervening years. Let’s look at a country where General Wesley Clark, a retired four-star US. Army general who was Supreme Allied Commander of Nato during the 1999 War in Yugoslavia can state categorically in public the Pentagon’s plans that “we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off, Iran”.

Let’s look at a country whose CIA have been proven by history to have been involved in almost every “spontaneous uprising” guerilla war and coup in Latin America in the 20th century and which for a while was a major if not the main illegal drug runner in the USA.

Let’s look at the country that has a state of the art warship the USS Mason patrolling off the coast of Yemen where half the population is starving yet the ship is firing cruise missiles at Yemeni targets as it thinks, because it isn't sure, that the Yemenis may have fired a rocket at them.

You ask "where have all the good men gone?" Gone to graveyards every one.

David J Crawford,

Flat 3/3,

131 Shuna Street,

Glasgow.