Letters to Editor - Today's IHT:
IHT Tuesday, December 31, 2002
Treatment of CIA suspects
The article finally lays on the line what has been in the wind for some time, namely that in its determination to restore the world to pre-Sept. 11 decency, the U.S. government is using torture when it can stomach it and having less squeamish countries use it when it cannot. Just what do we Americans have that is so valuable as to justify this kind of protection, and how much of this kind of protection, coupled with legendary arrogance and stupefying introversion, will it take to nurture a new generation of terrorists?
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Martin Kay, Stanford, California
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Regarding the report "For CIA suspects abroad, brass-knuckle treatment" (Dec. 27): My mother-in-law, who spent Christmas with us, was shocked by the revelations on the treatment of CIA suspects. As an American widow of a GI in World War II and a lifetime supporter of American values and human rights, she was ashamed to learn that such things were being done to detainees in the name of her country.
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Particularly abhorrent to her was the euphemistic admission by a national security official that "our guys may kick them around a little in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath" and the chilling observation by another that "pain control in wounded patients is a very subjective thing."
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As an Anglo-Irishman I know about the long-term damage to British-Irish relations caused by the bullyboy tactics of government agencies in the past in Northern Ireland. Tony Blair would do well to warn his friend George W. Bush that outrageous behavior of the kind described in the article is by far the most effective way of attracting recruits to the very cause he is trying to combat. Paddy Carpenter, Thorey, France It is simply unbelievable that such inhuman treatment of prisoners just to obtain admissions (dubious, since they are made under brutality) could be tolerated by the so-called champions of human rights. The Bush administration should be ashamed.
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F. M. Fikri, Jakarta
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The terrorists the United States is fighting are brutal and insensitive. But resort to its foes' methods or manners makes America no better than they are.
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Paul Kellogg, New York
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