'As a recently discharged Air Force Captain, I now have the privilege of free speech. America is at a crossroads in Iraq, and I find the revisionist historians deceitful and disgusting. Though no WMDs have been found, bringing the terrorists out of their caves and into broad daylight has surely enabled us to confront the enemy.

The brutal truth is that we can either fight terrorists in Iraq or in America. I have brothers in arms who are willing to die to defeat this enemy, yet the left wing have done nothing but add fuel to the flames of terror by its pacifism and assertions of failure in Iraq. Our fallen soldiers have not died in vain, and woe to those who say they have!'

[Jeremy Wade Anderson, Louisville, KY.]

This letter appeared in the NYT a few days ago. It's instructive on so many levels that it bears scrutiny. It would be easy to dismiss this out of hand, but there are two important reasons not to. Firstly, the captains implicit pulling of intellectual and factual rank by announcing his honorific. Secondly, that in so many discussions on the internet complete strangers seek to defend their arguments with 'I should know, I've been there' and other similar attempts to give gravity and kudos to usually ridiculous claims.

Let's take the first one and examine, the lets assume honest, claim that he is a captain. He instantly exposes his intellectual paucity by claiming those that challenge the reasons for waging war in Iraq were bogus as revisionists, even though it is there in black and white that the reasons given for going to war in Iraq have been shown to be baseless and more damningly just plain wrong. America was misled into war, to claim that this is revisionist is intellectually dishonest. Did Bush lie? Probably not, but note the necessary use of the word probably, we have to doubt his honesty, after all he has lied since - 'we don't torture' recently for example. What is certain is that Bush presided over one of the most infamous demonstrations of administrative incompetence in recent history; the cherrypicking of false intelligence to argue the casus belli, the deliberate ignoring of contrary and correct intelligence all compounded to mislead both Congress and the US public into supporting a disastrous war. That isn't revisionist or deceitful, it's the simple truth. And nobody has been held responsible for the litany of catastrophic cock-ups that have been made at all levels since Bush decided to make the case for going to war in Iraq.

But because our good captain has been there, seen it and done it he knows better of course. What is worrying is the intellectual lack that seems to pass for muster in senior ranks in the US armed forces.

Why do I say this? Well not only does this towering intellectual warrior call the accurate representation of history revisionist, he then goes on to claim that terrorists have been dragged out of their 'caves' and 'into broad daylight'. He totally ignores the fact that prior to invading Iraq there were no terrorists in Iraq and they were not attacking any GI Joes that weren't there. I'm assuming, reasonably, that he lacks the education to understand the concept of metaphor and really refers to Islamic jihadists from Afghanistan and elsewhere courtesy of Osama.

Whereas the terrorist network run by Zarqawi was a rival to Osama, and only last year announced an affiliation. The terrorists 'flooding into Iraq' are mostly novices from Saudi Arabia and North Africa. These people had no real means of attacking Americans until the Americans exposed themselves to danger by invading Iraq with too few troops, inadequate equipment and zero planning. By failing to secure either Iraq or her borders, the US created the conditions where anyone with half a donkey can now travel to Iraq from neighbouring states to hit at American donkeys within a matter of days.

Our mastermind the captain also ignores that the attacks such as Madrid and London, Bali and elsewhere were the product of homegrown terrorists, not veteran jihadist warriors who've largely stayed put and clear of Iraq while they plot new atrocities in safety because the US is distracted and bogged down in Iraq.

In other words the US has created new terrorists where before there were none. According to the Israeli scholar Reuben Paz,

'The vast majority of non-Iraqi Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activities prior to their arrival in Iraq.'

But capatain skyrocket knows better, why? Because he said so.

Moving onto the second point, why should serving in a slaughterhouse such as Iraq qualify someone as being necessarily better informed? Are the head cooks and bottle washers there better informed than political pundits? Or in situ journalists?

A soldiers experience in Baghdad is completely different to one in Basra, neither has a monopoly on the bigger picture. And as the situation in Basra grows more anarchic even the British now recognise that the relative peace there was but an illusion. In other words captain fantastic knows bugger all even if he has the rank and has served his time there. But don't take my opinion on this, just re-read his letter to see how shallow this undoubtedley brave persons scope is on the Iraqi conflict.

Perhaps then you'll notice that he assumes that anyone who challenges the reasons for the war, the war itself and its future are left-wing pacifists. Totally ignoring the increasing number of republicans who are now demanding quarterly reports from Bush for hard evidence of the progress he claims, evidence that is otherwise completely invisible to the reasoning world.

And of course in finishing, he adopts the Bush black and white with us or against us traitor or patriot idiocy by declaring with no sense or irony, woe betide anyone that dare suggests he's wrong.

Our unfortunate poorly educated captain is a sad endictment of the state of the US forces, not because he believes that he has done some good in Iraq, or believes that the fiasco will eventually produce some improvement in the Iraqi people's plight, but because he so aptly demonstrates an incapacity for and a lack of critical faculty.

That such a captain, a leader of men, can expose his own deductive inadequacy so naively is a worrying insight into the calibre of the US military.

Then again, the whole world has seen the quality of the US military in its failure in Iraq. And when you look at the calibre of the so called commander in chief, Bush, small wonder that such captains flourish while Iraq and the neo-con agenda burns so phosphorously white.

 yechydda,