WE in Bolton CND/Stop the War wish to express our deep disappointment at the fact that Julie Hilling and David Crausby voted for bombing IS in Iraq, thus making sure that any British hostages in the hands of IS will certainly be killed and that we will be very lucky indeed to escape retaliation (Remember 7/7 which was in retaliation for our attack on Iraq?).

To make sure that British hostages are killed instead of paying a ransom for them as other European powers do, and to invite attacks on the United Kingdom seems to us criminal. What are we doing it for?

To please the Americans, who use countries like ours for diplomatic cover not because they need us militarily.

Public opinion is deliberately being revved up to see IS as uniquely wicked. But when the Israeliis rained down bombs on Gaza, we justified a parallel wickedness. We seem to be almost perpetually at war, almost always against non-white peoples, whom the West has killed in their millions: Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War and Libya — a bloody roll call, which has invariably made matters worse as this latest war will do.

And what is so dreadful about these Western wars of choice, particularly if they are confined to bombing as in Serbia, Libya and now the IS campaign, is that they are conducted by invulnerable machines — drones, missiles fired from the sea, aircraft which those who are bombed have no means of challenging, few if any casualties on the Western side and all among the military, but large casualties on the side that is bombed, including women and children. The whole business stinks.

We are hoping to organise a party of Bolton anti-war activists to join in the anti-war march in London on Saturday, October 4 and hope to arrange a protest meeting a the Friends Meeting House on the evening of Thursday, October 9. Would anyone who wants to join us ring Neil on 079313 or Malcolm on Bolton 522839.

Neil McAlister (Chairman) Malcolm Pittock Keith Dewhurst Bolton Stop the War/CND