I would like to comment on Anthony Arundell's letter (August 3) in praise of Napoleon.

Bonaparte was indeed one of the greatest military leaders but I must correct one of Mr Arundell's statements.

Clausewitz was not one of Napoleon's generals. He was a Prussian, and fought against the French.

Napoleon did make a few mistakes, as do all generals, which was probably due to his health.

After 1807 his health started to affect him, leading to a loss of efficiency. It affected him at Borodino, and Dresden and at Leipzig he was doubled up in pain.

This was the reason he put Key in charge at Waterloo. When Bonaparte died, a postmortem examination revealed a stomach cancer.

I know there are allegations of arsenic poison. The latest theory is that wallpaper is to blame, the odour having arsenic content.

Napoleon, the master of land warfare, did not appreciate the difference of naval campaigns.

He thought fleets could be directed like armies, with little regard for the effect of weather on the movement of ships.

France's greatest general only just became French. Corsica, the island of his birth, was sold by Genoa to France just one year before he was born.

"We teach bloody instruction, which being taught, returns to plague us, the inventors."

As we remember the victims of last month's bombings, these words of Shakespeare's Macbeth should haunt the Government.

Since even the prestigious think-tank Chatham House has concluded that the bombings "were in large measure related to the war in Iraq", it is disingenuous of Tony Blair to claim otherwise.

The remedy is therefore simple: Withdraw all British troops as the Spanish, Ukrainian and other European Governments have done.

Whatever else Saddam Hussein was, he was no sponsor of international terrorism but in overthrowing him Bush and Blair have opened the floodgates to the violence of Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden.

Finally, given this Government's notorious manipulation of faulty intelligence and the inability of the intelligence services to foresee the events of July 7 we would do well to challenge the Government's demand for more draconian powers.

As a Senior Law Lord, Lord Holman - supported by Cherie Blair - has warned: "The greatest danger to the British people and British democracy is not terrorism per se but the Government's willingness to infringe even further on human rights and civil liberties in its struggle against it.

That way, one might add, lies the path to dictatorship.

-Fred Shipton, Brighton