MALCOLM Pittock has argued consistently that the war in Iraq was illegitimate and wrong. Many people would sympathise with that sincerely held view.

I write, however, to take issue with the contents of his most recent letter in which he suggests that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of genocide for which the US and UK governments should apologise.

Those attacks were unquestionably brutal. Many thousands of innocent women and children lost their lives during and long after the attacks, but it was not genocide.

By August 1945, the time when the bombs were dropped, the Second World War had dragged on for six years, the death toll stood at 55 million, the full horror of the gas chambers had been exposed and the Japanese military's rape of China, in which more than 10 million people had died, had emerged.

The war in Europe had ended three months earlier and yet the Japanese high command had pledged to continue their struggle until every last drop of blood had been spilt.

The war had to be brought to an end quickly and decisively. It was a truly horrific end, but German Nazism and Japanese Militarism were the two worst killing machines the world had ever seen, and the bravery and courage of the action taken by that generation of Britons and Americans who took on this terrible foe and defeated it should not be simply referred to as "genocidal".

Mr Pittock's worthy and appealing arguments against the war in Iraq will be undermined if he continues to employ such loose and misleading historical comparisons.

Martyn Cox

Ravens Holme

Bolton