THE ISSUE: The release of memos and pictures that reveal US terrorist-interrogation techniques.
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War is hell (“Torture Regrets Cheer Our Enemies,” Adam Brodsky, PostOpinion, May 1).
The men who fought in the world wars were no saints, but once we were at war with a fanatical enemy, the Greatest Generation was smart enough to know that it was “either them or us.”
Today we want to fight wars without casualties. We send our soldiers into combat and then criticize them for mistakes made during the heat of battle.
Now we have the nonsense over waterboarding. What I went through in boot camp in 1949 was a lot tougher than waterboarding, and so was the battle at the Chosin Reservoir.
Ralph Cutro
Gold Canyon, Ariz.
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I was a fireman on 9/11. I saw fellow citizens horribly burned to death as others jumped from the upper floors of the World Trade Center. Those doomed people were fully aware of their fate when they slammed into the pavement right in front of me.
My chest was crushed in the collapse of 2 WTC. If people think waterboarding is torture, they should try having their chest cracked while fully conscious. I haven’t had a pain-free day since then, never mind the memories.
What outrages me most is the “selective” outrage. No one complains when Americans are tortured and murdered.
Have we forgotten the beheading of Daniel Pearl or the sight of the bodies of our Army Rangers dragged naked through the streets of Mogadishu to the cheers of people they were sent to help?
It’s about time we challenge Americans to redraft the slogan, “Don’t Tread On Me!”
Robert Reeg
Stony Point
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What’s wrong with a little torture? If we can get information from our enemy combatants and save lives, we should use all the means we can devise.
The left’s soft position on enemies of the state costs US soldiers’ lives.
Would we rather protect enemies of the United States than our own soldiers and citizens?
As the saying goes: When we are kind to those who are cruel, we are cruel to those who are kind.
Alan J. Winters
Bellaire, Texas
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Since George W. Bush was elected in 2000, it has been the goal of many on the left to indict him on some kind of charge and, if not him, then members of his administration.
Obama’s supporters have a plan.
First, they declare any and all interrogation methods used under the Bush administration to extract information from terrorists as torture.
Next, they rile up the faithful and the media with displays of photos and videos of what they say is torture. Then they will get their lackeys in Congress to begin endless hearings that come up with evidence that laws were broken.
Attorney General Eric Holder will do the rest by convening federal grand juries that will indict various officials and dance around indicting both Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Neither will be indicted, but the indictment of others will smear them and convict them in the media and in the minds of Americans.
James Wood
North Babylon
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I would like to hear what Bush, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and all those folks defending waterboarding would say if it were our troops being waterboarded by other countries.
Charles Smith
Miami Beach, Fla.
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I have no desire to see Bush or his administration admonished or punished for immorally and illegally using torture techniques, but I have a big problem with Bush having told the American people and the world that “we do not torture.”
Was Bush unaware of what we were doing?
No president or administration is above the law. If America is to have any credibility throughout the world, we must make sure our government never repeats the immoral and illegal abuses of the past eight years.
Paul L. Whiteley Sr.
Louisville, Ky.
