When to wield a big stick

I take issue with Frederick Forsyth (Letters, August 22) over his exultation of US imperialist military might in preference to the UN's patient diplomacy and peace-keeping skills. The actual words Teddy Roosevelt used were subtly different. "If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, but neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness, there does not lie strength, power." President Roosevelt practiced a patient and restrained foreign policy that produced the Nobel peace prize in 1906 for the negotiation that ended the Russo-Japanese war. Contrast that with today's president, who has manufactured a needless war in Iraq that has killed over 6,000 civilians.
Paul Marsden MP

· I cannot imagine why Donald Anderson, chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, thinks it improper and unprecedented for a person who has appeared as a witness to brief a committee member on a line of inquiry to pursue with other witnesses. If a committee were looking into a point of criminal law, say, and had called a legal expert to give evidence, why on earth should that expert be debarred from suggesting questions to be put to later witnesses, such as government departments? This would certainly not be unprecedented, as I know from my own experience on many select committees.
George Cunningham
Member of Parliament 1970-83

· Ordinary readers and observers of government style in the years since Alastair Campbell came to power needed no David Kelly to tell us the case for war was sexed up and no Andrew Gilligan to report it. Dr Kelly was hounded to death for nothing.
Richard Dawkins
Oxford

Lib Dem, Shrewsbury & Atcham