NO SMOKING DAY: ON March 12 over a million UK smokers tried to stop smoking. I would like to say a big thank you and well done to all of them and to the thousands of experts who are helping them through the first tricky weeks.

Most of all I would like to say to keep going - you will be past the worst of it now and well on your way to a smoke-free future.

I hope that everyone who stopped on No Smoking Day is seeing the benefits already: extra cash, easier breathing and a growing feeling of freedom as the nicotine addiction fades.

It is an amazing achievement so, even if no one else celebrates with you, the No Smoking Day team is raising a glass to toast your success.

If anyone is struggling they can still check sources of NHS and other help on www.nosmokingday.org.uk - Doreen McIntyre, Chief Executive, No Smoking Day Campaign Office, London.

WAR AGAINST IRAQ

EVENTS have proved that, far from being the poodle of George Bush, Tony Blair has been a restraining influence on the American President.

Our premier is held in very high regard by the American people, is respected for his diplomacy and his insistence that we must fight against evil.

Memories are short, but we must never forget that it was the terrorists who attacked America on September 11.

There are people in this country who denigrate Tony Blair at every opportunity, especially the Labour lefties and also ex-Cabinet ministers, so it must have been a shock to those people to hear Mr Blair described as "the best Prime Minister this country has ever had".

The critics who say that we are only attacking Iraq because we want their oil received another blow when Tony Blair announced that every penny received from the sale of oil will be given to the Iraqi people. - Jason Roberts, Peterlee.

ONCE we have won the war against Iraq, young people will get the message: violence pays. - E Mooney, Stockton.

WELL, now we know for certain that our Prime Minister, the self-professed Christian Tony Blair, is a terrorist and a co-conspirator in an axis of evil with George Bush, another so-called Christian.

Hiding behind a thin veneer of respectability, they have violated international law and invaded a sovereign state in a naked act of aggression.

Who will be next to be bombed into submission? I can tell you who it won't be - Israel, which has nuclear and bio-chemical weapons to boot, and has been protected by countless American vetoes in the United Nations.

In conspiring with President Bush, Mr Blair has shamed himself, the office of PM and most damning of all, he has shamed our country in the eyes of the world.

Never again must our pathetic Parliament be allowed to be fooled into supporting the US in its murderous activities throughout the world. - Hugh Pender, Darlington.

IT was interesting to see the Desert Rats on TV recently, practising for old-fashioned trench warfare.

In the last Gulf War, the US army had a much more up-to-date method of dealing with Iraqi defensive trenches. Tanks pulling huge ploughs drove at speed alongside the trenches, burying the occupants with sand. Armoured vehicles followed, pumping machine-gun bullets into the trenches. Finally, all evidence of the massacre was obliterated by bulldozers.

Seventy miles of trenches were dealt with in this way, killing uncounted thousands of Iraqi conscripts.

We didn't hear about this until after the war. The man in charge of dispensing information to the media was Dick Cheney, now US Vice President. He didn't think the story would go down too well at the time. Sharon Griffiths (Echo, Mar 19) hopes the mothers of our young soldiers will have no cause to shed tears. I share that hope, but I think we should also remember that Iraqi soldiers are conscripts, not volunteers, and they have parents too. The agony of waiting for news, and the pain of bereavement, are the same, regardless of nationality. - Pete Winstanley, Durham.

IT is surprising just how many people in this country deride America. For whatever reasons they did support us and fight on our side in two world wars.

As our bombers returned from night raids on Germany, the Americans were taking off for daylight raids on the same targets and they also helped during our financial problems after the Second World War ended.

One would think we should be thankful that a country which has our language and similar democratic government and is generally on our side in international problems and is the most powerful country in the world should be supported by us.

What would those sceptics and critics be saying if the most powerful country in the world was Japan or China? - E Reynolds, Wheatley Hill.

I WAS opposed to this war on moral, legal and practical grounds and nothing I have seen or heard so far has changed my mind.

With every day the destabilisation of the region increases and the death toll among civilians and military personnel on both sides mounts. The corresponding need to put pressure on the US and UK governments grows ever more urgent before irreparable damage is done.

We, in the UK, can continue to demonstrate and to put pressure on our government but I suspect that the only effective protest we can make to the US government is a consumer boycott of high profile US goods and companies. Is there anyone out there in the Stop the War Coalition who can take this on and organise a country-wide or EU-wide or even world-wide boycott? There are many of us who would follow such a lead. - Michael Turnbull, Darlington.