I refer to Mustapha O­ng's letter castigating Harry Lee of Malaysia's "insensitive remarks" in his reference to the recent interview of Dr Mahathir Mohamad with Al-Jazeera pertaining to the US-led war against Iraq.

I shall paraphrase O­ng and ask if there is anything wrong in helping to liberate a nation held to ransom by thuggery to the point where even over a family dinner o­ne has to be cautious about what o­ne says in case a son, daughter, father, mother, brother or sister might be a spy for Saddam Hussein's notorious gangsters? Evidence of this is now o­n TV when you see the happy faces of ordinary Iraqis in celebration.

What Mustapha o­ng, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and all the anti-war advocates really are saying is that the world order ought to remain as it is so that tyrants like Saddam can hijack a political territory and do as they wish to their people and nobody has anything to say about it.

If that really is the morality that this world wants, then very soon that morality will work into households where what a tyrannical husband and father does in his own house will be nobody's business.

In Mahathir's anti-war stance, I see a hypocritical and selfish purpose. He bears the same guilt as Saddam, although not to the latter's degree, for human rights abuses within this country. Just ask Anwar Ibrahim.

Applying the same argument, this liberation of Iraq provides the necessary precedence and reason for Malaysia to be condemned and censured.

Mahathir knows that the Iraqi liberation gives birth to a new world order where there may in future be public and international censure for wayward countries controlled by leaders who abuse their powers and bring about human right abuses o­n their own people. Such international censures could culminate in economic censures as well.

This is not what a leader like Mahathir would want.