Military’s Civilian Problem

Re “Contractors Fall Through Legal Cracks,” May 4: So, the Pentagon is supposedly searching for a means to prosecute civilians in the abuse of Iraqis? Hogwash! The Pentagon has the authority and the means -- just not the integrity and moral courage to prosecute them. If Pentagon officials have the authority to arrest Iraqi civilians for alleged crimes (and the Abu Ghraib prison is full of such Iraqis), then they have the authority to arrest any civilian in Iraq who commits a crime.

Seems to me that what the Pentagon is really searching for is a means to prosecute its civilian contractors without revealing its own direct complicity in the crimes. The Pentagon could not contain the fallout from the trial of a civilian contractor in a federal court for abusing Iraqi prisoners; we might learn that the civilian contractors were doing exactly what the Pentagon expected of them.

Dale Jennings

Boulevard, Calif.

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Since when has our government started the practice of hiring private contractors to drive in military convoys and prepare and furnish food to our troops -- and now, we learn, to interrogate Iraqi prisoners of war? I am old enough to remember World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars, and I don’t remember any of these practices in those conflicts. The military always performed these functions without outside help.

Should we follow the money? Are some companies and corporations making some big bucks from this drummed-up and unnecessary war? This whole situation sickens and disgusts me.

Richard D. Curtis

Lake Forest

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First our commander in chief demonizes Iraqi insurgents as thugs, mass murderers, subhuman beasts, supporters of one of the world’s cruelest and most dangerous dictators. From the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the lowest private, everyone embraces this theme. Then our commander hires civilians to interrogate insurgence suspects.

Reservists with little training as jailers are put in charge of an overcrowded prison. The civilians ask the reservists to “soften up” their beastly charges. The chain of command looks the other way while the prisoners are tortured. As Rains said to Bogart: I’m shocked. Just shocked.

Marvin J. Wolf

Los Angeles

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The ugly American just got uglier.

Theresa Mohaddes

Rancho Palos Verdes