THE key comment made in “What will warrant the use of force?” (Comment, September 4) is the reminder that it was failed intelligence that led us into the Iraq War.

Saddam Hussein, we were constantly told, had chemical weapons of mass destruction, which he had used on the Kurds, etc, etc.

Yet no evidence whatever of such stockpiles was ever found, or of their use: so much for the intelligence services and their assurances.

All we have done in Iraq (and Libya and Egypt) as a result of this failed intelligence is to replace one dictatorship by another, at the cost of many lives and treasure on all sides.

Iraq has turned out to be a wholly pointless exercise, as has the entire ‘Arab Spring’ fomented by stupid politicians in Britain and the US.

We are now hearing the same inane comments from US and UK politicians in respect of Syria: it seems that no-one learns from history.

The people we need to make war on are those that manufacture and supply such chemical weapons, yet there is apparently no “intelligence”

on that.

Nor have I seen any “intelligence”

as to which side in Syria used these dreadful weapons: I don’t believe there is any such intelligence, just guesswork.

If there is a case, it needs to be published in full.

RICHARD F SHEPHERD

Cosheston

Pembroke