US bombers are taking off from Fairford, a British base, to bomb Iraq. These are real weapons of mass destruction and their cowardly aircrews don't even have to feel guilty for, unlike real soldiers, they don't have to look at the people they put a bayonet or a bullet into.

I write as a one-time RAF squaddie who took part in the decommissioning of the Lancasters belonging to the Dambuster Squadron at Scampton. It seems we have learned nothing. As a boy, I experienced the German blitzkrieg on Manchester. The cemetery at the end of my road had mass burials of the residents of Moss Side which was flattened.

Though I have been a Labour Party activist since 1943, I now despise the Blairs, Blunketts, Browns and Straws who have destroyed the Party. I believe our democracy is largely a fraud. We need to reinvent real forms of democratic control to check warmongering politicians.

Harold Smith,

Bradford on Avon.