Release of Hostages

Your headline reads, “Hostage Outcome Offers Lessons for Extremists” (Dec. 5). You betcha! So the lesson was that the benefits of hostage-taking may no longer outweigh the costs. What costs, pray tell?

Hats off to Alann Steen for pleading that his captors not go unpunished! (Might that include that likely source of the captors’ leadership and funds, our “coalition partner,” Hafez Assad?) And hats off to Terry Anderson for cutting as short as possible the charade that posed him, all smiles, beneath Assad’s portrait!

We pay taxes for our government to protect American citizens, both here and abroad. In the hostage situation, that has failed miserably. Our leaders should be held accountable by the hostages, their families and all Americans. Several hostages have died, and those who survived have lost years of their lives. The hostage ordeal won’t really be over until its perpetrators are brought to justice.

BARBARA EDSALL, Frazier Park