I don't mind Bill Randall dissing the USA, which is apparently "no longer a democracy" (Letters, November 25). This country is big and rich enough to take it.

But I do object to his throwaway reference to Rwanda, when he smirks that UN observers should monitor the next US election as they have in that agonised African country, where so many innocent men, women and children have been tortured, maimed and killed at the hands of their countrymen.

To say that the US and Rwanda are similarly "struggling to come to terms with the democratic process" is to spit on the mass graves of a tragic nation just for the sake of a smug one-liner which isn't even funny.

It isn't worthy of anyone, let alone a good man like Mr Randall.

-Julie Burchill, Hove