Letters: The Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture
I am shocked that in the wake of 9-11, the CIA was mean to some people in order to gather immediate information about who they are and what are they up to!
They should have approached these suspects only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., rung the doorbell and invited them for coffee and a few verses of Kumbayah!
Seriously, I think if a poll of “stupid” American voters were done either then or now, the answer would be overwhelmingly to get the information period.
For terrorists who value death and suicide as a way to blow up innocent people, it may take more than a chat to get information and it may take some time to break their will.
Sen. Feinstein has achieved nothing beyond embarrassing our security network and making us, the American citizens, paranoid and less secure.
She should be ashamed that this idiotic disclosure is her legacy. Our intelligence personnel deserve our support and understanding instead of suspicion.
— Dr. Lee S. Anderson, Fort Worth
After reading the comments about torture (The Daily STEW, Thursday), I first wondered if anyone who spoke out in favor of torture actually read the summary.
If they had, they would have read how one prisoner died of hypothermia while chained to a wall. Or how another had a tube shoved into his rectum so that they could force-feed his pureed dinner into him, without any medical reason to do so.
There are many more accounts of torture.
Nazis did many of the same things and we charged them with war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.
And I wish someone would find in the Bible where it says that we should treat others as we wish to be treated, except when we want to torture someone (then it’s OK).
— Richard LaChance, Fort Worth
Apparently, it is OK to cut the heads off of Americans as well as to torture, sodomize and butcher our soldiers. But it is “horrible” to torture the enemy, totally not acceptable.
Our opponent is of a totally different bent about what is right/not right. Considering that they have not responded to a kind and Christian treatment and have bloodied our men women and children without cause, and live under the old law of “eye for an eye,” it is necessary to respond in kind.
Sadly, they do not respond to kindness and goodwill.
They come from a place of living in barbaric conditions and to those opponents who show mercy and kindness they consider them weak and less than human.
To protect our people, one must use the tools available no matter what they are.
Considering what they are on record as doing to our soldiers and our people, I support President Bush and his response to whether we should apply stronger techniques.
You have to make a believer out of your enemies — whatever it takes.
— Clay Riley, Weatherford
I see the response from Cheney and Bush are pretty much as expected and the CIA operatives say “it’s what we were ordered to do.”
The United States declared that response out of bounds when Himmler tried to use it saying Hitler told him to “do so,” as did the Nazis who ran the death camps.
If you are so very worried about the response to the report from other countries, maybe you should try not using torture as a means to an end.
The report concluded that very little intelligence was revealed using these methods and even if it was, I believe the American people do not want these methods used in our name.
I for one cry out against it.
If other countries use them, we should take them to the UN and if that will not work, we should use honest and honorable means and methods to fight back.
That is what separates us from them, is it not?
— Robert Cappa, Bedford
This story was originally published December 12, 2014 at 7:38 PM with the headline "Letters: The Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture."