Brutality, plain and simple

Re “Waterboarding is still an option,” Feb. 7

It is impossible to reconcile how the current occupants of the White House can even remotely claim to be Christian and, with the same mouth, suggest that waterboarding is legal. Talk about the ultimate double-speak.

Never mind the reality that international treaties, ones the United States is a signatory to, state that such techniques constitute torture and consequently make it illegal.

What’s truly astounding are the number of so-called Christians who line up behind this mockery, in their lame attempts to justify behavior that is not only illegal but clearly immoral. It truly boggles the mind. Spare us the “ticking bomb” justification. This is brutality, plain and simple.

And once we slip into such behavior, we are little more than warring animals rather than human beings aspiring to follow in Christ’s footsteps. Shame on all of us for allowing such things as torture to occur.

Elizabeth Broyles

Claremont

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May I suggest The Times amend its usage regarding the torture technique known as waterboarding? On Tuesday, The Times referred to waterboarding as “simulated drowning,” and on Wednesday, as “simulated-drowning method.”

Since the technique involves filling a person’s lungs with water, it is plainly no simulation but is in fact drowning.

This particular form of torture sometimes results in death, and the cause of death is drowning, not simulated drowning. Victims do not simulate death. They die, pure and simple.

James Caufield

Los Angeles

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I am amazed by how the White House continues to suggest that waterboarding is not torture.

You just need to look at the fact that the U.S. organized the tribunals that convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Allied military personnel and civilians during World War II. How could it be torture then but not now?

Mary Shaw

Norristown, Pa.