Torture is torture

Re “Files detail CIA tactics on captives,” April 17

Just because torture was legal in Nazi Germany did not make it right. Nor did it protect Nazi war criminals from prosecution at the Nuremberg trials.

Just because some fanatical lawyers in the Bush administration decided that torture should be legal does not make it right either.

What happens the next time some despot, here or abroad, decides that torture is legal? Do we let that pass?

We must prosecute these criminals in the Central Intelligence Agency to the fullest extent of the law or we, as a civilized society, will have failed.

Brian Bard

Glendale

As a former political prisoner who was tortured by the Argentine military and adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, I am very disappointed at President Obama’s decision not to allow prosecutions of members of the U.S. government who engaged in torture. His decision puts him on the side of those who argued that Nazi leaders accused of crimes against humanity were only following orders. Even worse, it implies the rationalization that the goal of defeating terrorism justifies any means. This is a flawed point of view. Torture is torture, and it does not matter if it was practiced by a Stalinist operative, an agent of the Gestapo -- or even by a member of an intelligence agency of a democratic country.

Nestor Fantini

Northridge

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Isn’t it amazing how a very few lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department can write secret memos that allow the U.S. government to overturn laws, treaties and conventions?

The Supreme Court justices must be green with envy -- usually nine of them act to issue a ruling, each undergoes Senate confirmation, and they must publish their opinions. Now we know where true power resides.

Lewis Cohen

Riverside

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Re “Close the torture loophole,” editorial, April 18

I was an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve trained to debrief naval officers released from POW camps in Vietnam. In order to be familiar with the torture inflicted on our men, we were subjected to torture, including waterboarding and walling.

Granted, waterboarding and walling are no picnic -- but I survived in good order. I learned that the subject thinks that he is drowning but that the action is harmless, and that a Navy doctor was nearby to prevent any subsequent illness or harm.

Calm down, L.A. Times. We didn’t hurt those terrorists. This citizen has survived to an old age of 77.

William Mattingly

La Habra Heights

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The touchy-feely world of liberals and their hatred of former President Bush is vividly portrayed in this editorial. The details of the interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists read like a college fraternity hazing handbook, but the goal of the procedures used is not initiation into some campus organization. It is the deadly serious business of gaining vital information to foil future terrorist attacks like those that occurred on 9/11 -- or worse.

That critics of benign interrogation methods are blinded by their ideology is truly frightening. God help America if this velvet-glove attitude prevails in our war against terrorism.

Donald Hirt

Paso Robles