Letter: Campaign costs

Jimmy Carter's tragic error of arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan cost thousands of US lives and Barack Obama looks set to repeat the mistake by arming Libya's Islamist rebels.

Such an action would intensify hostilities resulting in really serious civilian casualties, the avoidance of which I understood to be the purpose of trying to remove Muammar Gaddafi.

He has been selected from some 70 of the world's ruling megalomaniacs such as Kim Jong-il, Mugabe, Burma's Than Shwe, Sudan's al-Bashir and Ethiopia's Zenawi.

Gaddafi is by no stretch of the imagination the worst and his deposition could have been left to the Libyans but if we must interfere, it should be via trade and diplomatic isolation.

Our leaders were deaf to the endless warnings from Turkey that trouble was brewing in the Islamic Crescent and, at this stage, we should simply avoid making things worse.

(Dr) John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews

The Golden Lions, Scotland's only full-time professional army display team, has been disbanded due to defence cuts (your report, 28 March).

The cost savings on insurance were stated as 20,000 per annum.

Compare this with the cost of the Tomahawk missiles we are freely firing at Libya at an estimated cost of over half a million pounds each.

This is over and above the 6 billion of defence write-offs due to recent cancellation of Ministry of Defence programmes such as the Nimrod replacement (your report, 31 March).

It would appear that the MoD is petty penny-pinching over minutiae.

Michael N Crosby

Muiravonside

By Linlithgow