You tell us about Libyan authorities manipulating news in their favour (Report, Media, 28 February). In fact, the overwhelming media slant is anti-Gaddafi, associating him, for example, with the threat of Rwanda-scale genocide. Gaddafi's eccentricity makes it easy for the western media to portray him as "mad", but until this year Libya had been one of Africa's more stable countries, with high standards of public health and literacy and probably the lowest levels of poverty on that continent. It had been enjoying improved relations with the west, but Nato intervention has put paid to that. Libya is divided between nationalists/loyalists on one side and, on the other, a disparate rebellion tainted with the support of US-led air strikes. It is no coincidence that the rebels hold sway over oil-rich areas and their adjoining ports. "Divide and rule" will prove a perfect recipe for Libya's radicalisation and a way in for the more real threat: al-Qaida.
Kevin Bannon
Cork, Ireland
• It is shocking that you believe "the worst possible outcome in Libya would be partition, with a Gaddafi-held zone holding on for months or years" (Editorial, 29 March). Much worse would be a bloodbath in which civilians on both sides are massacred, while the whole "responsibility to protect" doctrine is undermined because Britain, France and the US distort a UN resolution so as to bring about regime change.
Michael Newman
London
• It seems you wish to postpone a ceasefire and continue warring in Libya on the basis of "the limited evidence" that exists about opposition to Gaddafi in western Libya. His regime is morally indefensible, but your justification of continued military action in Libya on the basis of evidence that lies between the dubious and spurious brings to mind the phrase "weapons of mass destruction".
Charles Sharpe
Totnes, Devon