PERHAPS I might reply to the propaganda promoted by Stephen Smith (Letters, December 3).

The Stop the War Coalition is led by the Socialist Workers Party with a little help from the Muslim Association of Britain. One of the leading lights in the former is George Galloway.

To suggest British "anti-warites" are in the majority is untrue; unless Stephen believes polls such as YouGov or the Daily Mail's. In each case the number of people polled was too small to eliminate chance. More people voted on Big Brother than on Iraq.

What is all this about not having a mandate? For something like 12 years Saddam Hussein ignored countless UN resolutions. It was only the courage of Britain and the USA in enforcing the northern and southern No Fly Zones that stopped him from murdering even more of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs.

To suggest the French and Russians would not veto any further UN Security Council mandate is disingenuous; their economic concerns would override any moral concerns. China would, of course, abstain from the vote as per normal.

True, no WMDs have yet been found. Of course, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Of course, terrorists don't live by democratic norms but, by and large, they operate in such states. Precisely because they wish to see the end of society, preferring something along the lines of a theocracy - and a fundamentalist one at that.

I am not writing Bush and Blair a blank cheque but, at the same time, I am trying to live in the real world. Perhaps Stephen Smith might spare the time to come down from his Feckenham ivory tower.

DON VINCENT

Middleton Mews

Redditch