As I read Jean Calder's denunciation of torture and human rights abuse in Iraq and elsewhere, I listened to the Commander of US Forces in Iraq, Mark Kimmits, explain that "only six or seven Americans have been charged with such abuse and maybe another 20 are guilty".

Why, when Iraqis are all too aware of the Red Cross and Amnesty reports detailing a secret gulag of prisons across Iraq and Afghanistan, does General Kimmits even bother to tell such blatant lies?

Why when even General Karpinski, nominal head of Abu Ghraib prison, stated that Military Intelligence had taken responsibility for the treatment of suspects and we know that orders were given by yet another general, brought over from Guantanamo, for them to be "softened up" does the US Military engage in such futile self-deception?

If it is incapable of telling the truth, even to itself, the reason surely is because the whole war in Iraq was fought on a series of lies?

What Jean did not mention is that while the Soviet Union provided an excuse for what happened in Chile, East Timor etc. during the Cold War, today there is a need to literally invent such enemies. And who better than one's former allies?

Saddam, once the anti-communist golden boy, who Donald Rumsfield personally greeted, overnight became an enemy once the war with Iran was over.

The Taliban and Al-Quaeda would not have even existed if the US had not sought to arm and equip Islamic Fundamentalism in its battles with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

What we are seeing is the eternal war that George Orwell envisaged in 1984 against hidden enemies, i.e. terrorism.

Tony Greenstein

Secretary, Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre,

-Crestway Parade, Hollingdean, Brighton