Iraqi Prisoners Tortured: Now We Know

Re “Report on Iraqi Prison Found ‘Systemic and Illegal Abuse,’ ” May 3: Get out! Get out! Get out now! We’re not winning any hearts and minds in Iraq. Instead, we’re acting like we’ve lost ours.

John Ott

Mission Hills

One of the justifications for the war that President Bush keeps repeating is that Saddam Hussein is not killing or torturing his people any longer, that the Iraqis are now free under the American occupation forces. Right you are, George. Saddam isn’t abusing his people anymore; we’re doing that for him.

Robert Carrelli

Thousand Oaks

Although the photos of Iraqi prisoners suffering humiliation may seem over the line, how does suffering such humiliation pale when the ultimate goal is to save lives? Granted, the photos seem somewhat tasteless, but what are these hard-core alleged insurgents suspected of? Killing and maiming innocent civilians and brave coalition soldiers alike? I don’t think we as Americans have the right to complain about how the intelligence community conducts interrogations when its ultimate goal parallels ours: to save the lives of citizens.

Gregg M. Shives

Alhambra

Bush and I share a “deep disgust” over recently released photos of American soldiers torturing helpless Iraqi prisoners (May 2). We all might be shocked when confronted with such visceral photographic evidence, but we have no excuse for being surprised. This is not just a few bad apples in a large force. Torture has become our official policy.

We have seen prisoners in Guantanamo hooded and chained, kneeling in open-air cages, uncharged with any crime. Those lucky enough to have been released report regular beatings, extreme deprivation and amputations of limbs due to exposure to the elements. Is this not torture? Imagine one of our soldiers held under such conditions.

The Red Cross condemned our treatment of prisoners. Amnesty International has documented evidence showing that the torture at Abu Ghraib prison is not an isolated incident. Sorry, people, “I didn’t know” is no longer an option.

Robert McKean

Newbury Park

What a bunch of baloney. So the U.S. soldiers abuse a bunch of Iraqis. Big deal. So they humiliated them. It beats killing them or stabbing them a hundred times, the way the Arabs killed an Israeli soldier and threw his body out a window, one of the torturers showing the world his bloody hands. How about the U.S. reporter they tortured and beheaded? Think his family wasn’t and still isn’t tortured by the way he died? I had a college frat initiation that was a worse torture than the Iraqis received.

Jack Feigin

Beverly Hills

When Bush says that the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American troops “do not reflect the nature of the men and women we’ve sent overseas” (May 1), he is probably right. What he doesn’t say, perhaps because he doesn’t know it, is that such behavior is a product of war. War damages not only the wounded, killed and tortured, but the “winners” as well. In the absence of any firsthand experience with war, Bush should at least have made some effort to understand its costs in other ways.

He might have learned this lesson from any number of good books on the subject. Or he might have sat down with someone who had “been there,” like Secretary of State Colin Powell or Sen. John Kerry -- or even his own father.

John Miller

Irvine

Sick. Sick. Sick. If we ever expect future American POWs (and there will surely be some) to be treated according to the Geneva Convention, the soldiers and civilians responsible for this criminal mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners must be replaced, arrested, tried and sentenced as swiftly and harshly as the law allows. The case must be assigned the highest priority. There is no excuse -- none, nada -- for such criminal behavior. Punishment should be meted out all the way to the top, including the inept general responsible for the prisons.

Bill Gourlay

Westlake Village