Letters: Torture on the silver screen

Re “Why the fabrication?,” Opinion, Dec. 23

It is astonishing that what is not disputed about “Zero Dark Thirty” is its accurate depiction of how for years the CIA deliberately and systematically tortured detainees with waterboarding and other savage forms of cruel and degrading treatment prohibited by the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified in 1994.

Terry McDermott can state as undisputed fact that President George W. Bush ordered torture, and a major motion picture can accurately portray that torture in gruesome detail, yet President Obama and Congress refuse to hold Bush and his co-conspirators accountable for the war crimes and crimes against humanity they committed.

Stephen Rohde

Los Angeles

Indeed, it does say something about our psychology when the so-called Hollywood liberals aid and abet the arguments of Republican neoconservatives of the necessity for torture in our foreign policy. Were director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal so insecure about succeeding financially in their endeavor that they would remake history? Evidently, yes.

What a disservice they have done to those gullible Americans who will see this movie and assume that this is the accurate depiction of events leading to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Shame on Bigelow and Boal for assisting Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney in legitimizing the criminal implementation of torture.

Bob Teigan

Simi Valley

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