Shame of The Independent

Fine letter in today's Independent from the journalist William Shawcross:

Marla Ruzicka was a brave and selfless woman who did an enormous amount in her short life for innocent victims of conflict. To run the story of her death under the splash headline "The senseless death of the woman who fought George Bush" (19 April) is totally misleading. She was murdered by a suicide bomber in Iraq. Your editorial rightly praised her work and you said her legacy "should put many politicians in America, and in our own country, to shame". Yet you have no criticism for those who murdered her. That puts you to shame.

Shawcross's book on the background to the Iraq War, Allies (recently reissued with a new preface bringing the story up to date) is the best thing written on the subject. It is a shame, and a dispiriting reflection on the governments of the US and UK, that the urgent and compelling case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein by force was largely left to writers such as Shawcross and Christopher Hitchens to argue. They did, and do, a fine job in a noble cause.