IT is a mad world: smacking a child in Britain can land you in court, yet bombing children abroad can be done with impunity.

American "heroes", as so often, consider war not a necessary evil, but rather good fun.

The cynicism of marking bombs with greetings and consequently dropping them from safe planes on defenceless civilians puts them together with the NY/Washington bombers -- outside the human family. The choice of a Sunday as the beginning of the killing campaign and not, say, the Saturday Sabbath, is also noteworthy.

Britain and the USA do not seem to be capable of living without wars. They have been "at it" for the best part of the past 100 years, while even the Nazis managed only just six years.

Politicians talk much nonsense much of the time, but the recent output of internationally orchestrated, mostly grossly dishonest claptrap, has long reached sickening levels. Here we are being told that our hospitals are prepared for possible biological and chemical warfare, when, in reality, our health system already kills scores of peace-time patients through lack of funding. Their enemy was not Osama bin Laden!

While a million of British sufferers are deteriorating on hospital waiting lists, our Chancellor of the Exchequer declares that he has thousands of millions to spare for a long drawn-out war.

Mrs B Stuart

Lord's Stile Lane

Bromley Cross, Bolton