As a long-term reader of The Argus, I have been greatly disturbed by your biased coverage of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, including the routine recycling of anti-Coalition diatribes in your letters pages.

However, the largely unsubstantiated ranting of your columnist Jean Calder (May 29) surely outdoes even those myopic prejudices.

Rather than focusing upon the hazy and disputed events in Chile

in 1973, Ms Calder could reflect on the restorations of democracy facilitated by the USA in Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Perhaps Cuba may be as lucky in the future (although she doubt-less regards Castro as a "popular dictator")?

As to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, let us not forget that before the Coalition intervened Afghan women were banned from employment and education and liable to beatings by the "Religious Police" on the streets.

In Iraq, the state was a plaything in the hands of Saddam and his sons, aided by Ba'ath Party thugs. The Shia majority, some of whom are now agitating against the coalition, were completely denied rights (they are now allowed to celebrate religious festivals after 30 years of prohibition).

While there has been the inexcusable abuse of some prisoners by a few US soldiers, this is in no way comparable to the massacres and routine torture perpetrated for more than two decades by Saddam.

It is surely clear that the current agitation in Iraq is not a popular uprising but a combination of Ba'ath remnants, foreign terrorists (including al-Qaeda), and opportunists such as Muqtada al-Sadr, who wish to pre-empt the forthcoming elections.

"Freedom fighters" do not blow up UN and Red Cross compounds and mass murder schoolchildren. Such actions are clearly the work of terrorists attempting to destabilise peaceful reconstruction.

Finally, to Ms Calder and others of similar leanings: You frequently insinuate the USA and UK supported and armed Saddam. I challenge you to list any such weaponry - Iraq used exclusively Soviet and French armaments in the 1991 Gulf War.

Lavender Street,

-Brighton