MR Isherwood appears to have no respect for international law, otherwise he could not regard me as biased for citing it.

Does he really think that the US should be bound by it?

As regards civilian casualties, the death toll of September 11 has (thankfully) been revised downwards from 6000 to 3000 (Amnesty Jan/Feb 2002), for Afghan civilian casualties my authority is Max Herold, a US Economics professor.

Using a carefully objective method, he estimated that at least 3,767 Afghans had been killed between October 7 and December 10 (Guardian, December 20).

Since Afghan civilians continued to be killed long after December 10, a death toll of 4,000 is, if anything, a conservative estimate.

Malcolm Pittock

St James Avenue

Breightmet, Bolton