6 DECEMBER 2003, Page 42

What's stopping the US?

From Professor Sir Michael Howard Sir: I read with interest Mark Steyn's proposal that the United States should now liberate five more countries (These five regimes must go', 29 November). An excellent idea, provided that she has sufficient complaisant émigrés to govern them on her behalf, enough civil servants to send to administer them, enough troops to keep order in all of them, and enough taxpayers happy to foot the bill into the indefinite future.

Given all this, there is no reason why she should not begin at once.

Michael Howard

Hu ngerford, Be rks