What tortured logic allows torture by U.S.?

Re “Where’s the outrage?” Opinion, Sept. 30

I’m at a complete loss to see how any society that considers itself to be evolved and civilized can entertain the thought of any sort of torture of another human being. Yet the discussions in the U.S. Capitol are not that inhumanity is wrong because it demeans and lowers us to a status below animalism, but because it might cause the same vicious behavior to be used upon our own. What manner of people are we to argue that the savage misdeeds perpetrated by others justify the same sort of treatment by us? Even if we were unaware that information obtained by hideous means is generally false and are sure that unspeakable actions have been and are being taken by others, our own moral, ethical, civilized beliefs should preclude vengeful acts that mirror those who would destroy us. Otherwise we lose all claim to having developed more than the thinnest veneer that, when scratched, returns us to the stage of the first man who walked upon a dangerous Earth millenniums ago.

ELEANOR JACKSON

Palm Springs

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Perhaps JoAnn Wypijewski can find the outrage by looking at American heads being chopped off, American soldiers’ mutilated bodies being dragged through streets or the many other atrocities committed against our people by perpetrators who then like to display these acts on broadcast videos.

ENRICO MUTASCIO

Palm Springs