I think Gary Kamiya is broadly right in that Iran is just basically trying to look after its own interests in the region and is not in the business of unleashing worldwide jihad, destroying Israel on the way. Sure there's a lot of bluster and brinkmanship but there's a lot of that from all sorts of places, isn't there?

And Kamiya is right in that America's attitude to Iran is the mirror image of its attitude to Israel: an unquestioning support for one against an unquestioning demonization of the other. You can see examples in some of these letters. It's as if there must be a bad guy and a good guy and any shades of grey just can't be comprehended.

I despair of the Cheneyesque attitude that can just write off an entire country and its people by saying "we don't speak to evil". If anything's "evil", it's views like that, and until that changes, America's dealings with the Middle East will remain mired in ignorance and violence.

It was always a mystery to me, growing up in the UK, why more Americans didn't protest the actions of their government.

Over here, America's dodgy dealings round the world were an open secret. We knew about the US-enabled death squads in South America. Later, we knew about the goings on in Central America, where Ronald Reagan's government aided the Contra 'freedom fighters' in their orgy of violence in Nicaragua. And so on.

So why, as self-proclaimed 'leaders of the free world', did Americans tolerate this? Was it that they didn't know, or didn't believe it? Or was it that they felt the ends justified the means? Or was it that they did protest but were just ignored and/or vilified by the government and MSM?

And now we have torturing, Guantanamo, extraordinary renditions, black sites, ruthless mercenary armies. There is some protest at this within America, but will it change anything? When it all blows over will it just be business as usual?

I think the rest of the world has been conned again by the US: the US adopts a totally untenable position but eventually allows itself to be talked round to some sort of deal. This deal, however, contains no binding commitments on anybody and, already, Bush is back-tracking. I can't help feeling that the US won't be too disappointed at the outcome. Environmentalists, however, are not happy at all.

And I think it's only fair that the richer countries should help developing countries if we want them to cut back on emissions. The US and Europe have had over 100 years of polluting away like mad while their economies grew and industrialized. If we want the likes of China and India to rein in their economies after only a few years of growth, then we need to offer them incentives. They certainly won't act if they see the US doing nothing.

Does Laura Miller really think that books written in English by non-Americans, and set abroad, should have local terms translated into American equivalents?

This does not happen in reverse. Books published in Britain, for example, written by Americans about America do not put British usages into American mouths. The spelling is usually anglicized, but it would just be ludicrous for Americans to suddenly start talking 'trousers', 'pavements' and 'aeroplanes'.

So is it really so hard for American readers to understand English words as spoken by English people in England without first converting them into American equivalents?

Somebody mentioned that a President Obama would help to heal America's image abroad. Anybody's better than Bush but it's what he would actually do as president that counts, beyond just giving Americans a warm feeling.

He had the guts to oppose the Iraq war - a good sign - but has made the same belligerent noises about Iran ("The Iranian regime is a threat to all of us") and seems to have the same blind spot over Israel/Palestine as the other candidates.

This misty-eyed sentimentality towards Obama is all very well but it's reality that counts. George Bush doesn't do reality and I would suggest that what America needs is a president who takes an intelligent approach to the real world as he/she finds it and not one who ignores inconvenient facts or tries to remake parts of the world in America's image, whether they like it or not.

Obama may be the man for this (he certainly seems better than Clinton) but all this feel-good sentimentality is, on its own, not going to get the job done.

"If we are ever to regain our standing as a nation committed to the rule of law and fundamental human rights, we must close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay now..."

Too late.

If you close Guantanamo now and left Iraq tomorrow do you really think people round the world will just suddenly forget the torture, the illegal renditions and the hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq? You don't just forget things like that.

It's a long road back from here. It will need recognition from the US that what has happened is wrong and is not what America stands for. And that will take prosecutions of the guilty and a reassessment of America's role in the world.

What?

I just don't believe this to be true. As StefanMuc pointed out, I'm sure you could identify a band of Wagner obsessives - as you could in some other countries - but as a generalization it's just not true.

In fact, I'm not sure what the point of this article is. It's not really 'about' Wagner, or about music, or about Bayreuth. Maybe some people like this sort of stuff but to me it's just a selection of slightly up-market scurrilous gossip.

There's scope for an interesting article about and around Wagner, but this wasn't it.