Readers React: Real people -- not ‘some folks’ -- were tortured by the U.S.
To the editor: As any professor of communication can tell you, words not only reflect reality, they also frame it, put a context on it and re-create it. So it is with anger, as a progressive Democrat, that I read that President Obama noted “we tortured some folks.” (“Obama: ‘We tortured some folks,’” Aug. 1)
“Some folks.” A minimizing phrase, a trivializing phrase, a rather cozy phrase that recalls small towns and earlier, gentler times.
Why didn’t he tell it like it is? That George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the whole CIA gang tortured real flesh-and-blood people, real human beings.
We tortured people, not “some folks.” We should remember.
Allen Levy, Culver City
The writer is an assistant professor of communication studies at Chapman University.
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To the editor: To use the president’s very unpresidential vernacular when discussing the interrogation methods used by courageous U.S. intelligence officers when questioning accused
Islamic terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we should all remember, “They murdered some folks.”
Keith Karpé, Aliso Viejo
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