IN a post-Saddam Iraq there were always going to be potential pitfalls of the kind Mr Margrett suggests (You Say, May 10).

Neither ousting Saddam nor its aftermath was ever going to be a walk in the park.

However, doing nothing would have been immeasurably more dangerous.

For 12 years, Saddam flouted the terms of the ceasefire imposed on him in 1991, in defiance of 17 mandatory UN Security Council resolutions.

To its shame the UN continually turned a blind eye, punishing each successive breach of its resolutions by - er, passing another one.

The message all this was sending, not only to Saddam but also to any other rogue dictators looking on, was that if you're sufficiently wily and thick-skinned, you will ultimately get away with defying the world community.

That would have led to a far more dangerous state of affairs than the one we face now, even if that has dangers of its own. Now such people know different - very different. Winston Churchill said of democracy that it was the worst option, "except for all the others".

Likewise ridding the world of Saddam's regime, the very definition of "the lesser of two evils".

JULIAN THAKE,

Worcester.