Letter: Recipe for US military disaster

Sir: President Clinton's instructions to American troops going to Bosnia are scarcely credible. He told them: "If you think you are about to be attacked, you may respond with massive fire-power."

This is a recipe for disaster, the kind of disaster that occurred in Vietnam, as when some American officers in Saigon panicked when a car backfired and started shooting wildly, killing five Vietnamese (and none was court martialled), and in Somalia when American helicopter gunships killed dozens of Somalis pointlessly.

It makes one appreciate the behaviour of the British Army in Northern Ireland.

Yours sincerely

Norman Moss

London, W12