IT is abundantly clear that Isis needs to be defeated, the question is how this is best achieved.

The more successful they are greater danger they will pose to us, but they are a greater danger immediately to communities in the Middle East. We should not be indifferent, or say that it is a problem in another part of the world.

I believe if the West takes the view it has to take charge of the situation and send troops to sort it out it can only make matters worse

It is not that our hands are clean. The Northern Echo's recent editorial (Nov 17) rightly pointed to the Gulf States saying one thing and doing another, but we sell them arms and not long ago when the serious fraud office wanted to investigate corruption the Government stopped the inquiry

I have found throughout my life that the accounts which we are given about what happens abroad have little relationship with the facts when I have seen for myself. I do not regard as reliable what is usually reported

That is why I am not fully in accord with official remembrances of the wars. I have learned not to trust what I am told.

G Bulmer, Billingham.