Most comments on my letter commending U.S. President George W. Bush for liberating Iraq and Afghanistan are so contrived and so much anti-American that nothing can be said about them. Such rabid anti-Americanism is also common here in Canada. As Prof. Salim Mansur, professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, pointed out in an op-ed in The Free Press, London, Ontario: "Such writings, which indicate the sort of insidious anti-Americanism festering in our political realm, fed by the imaginings of those who do not know better about our tradition of respectful partnership with our worthy neighbour.... Those most distant from Iraq, such as many people engaged in anti-war demonstrations in Canada, were concerned more with opposing American power out of anti-Americanism than with thinking about the condition of Iraqis under tyranny."

Now the Iraqi voices are speaking out. Hamid Ali Alkifaey, an Iraqi journalist who returned to Baghdad after years of exile in London, recently wrote a long column in The London Guardian on May 16. After recounting the horrors his family and friends had suffered during Saddam's brutal yoke, Mr. Alkifaey concluded: "However, looking on the bright side of life, Iraq is now a free country thanks to the courage of U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the U.S. and British people who backed them."

This should answer all criticism of anti-American political groups and individuals.