At the beginning of 1983, Irish ambassador Tadgh O’Sullivan believed it was going to be a decisive year for US President Ronald Reagan whose competency was being severely questioned both on the ideological and economic fronts.

THE US claimed that their war on Iraq was done to bring democracy to the people of Iraq. Now they say that they do not want (read ‘will not allow’) a fundamentalist Shi’ite regime in Iraq. So much for their promise of a free democratic Iraq, as the US rejects and arrests various representatives of the Iraqi people.