A time comes when silence is betrayal . . . We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness so close around us.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture
Torture, Morality and Conscience
In response to a story in the Washington Post on June 4, a feature about the mental health problems of torturers, WRRCAT members wrote letters to the editor. Three of these were published, below:
Washington Post
Friday, June 8, 2007; A18
If you read between the lines of the June 4 front-page article "The Tortured Lives of Interrogators," you can see the error in the American discussion of torture.
We have been fed the line that torture is about obtaining useful intelligence. Nothing could be further from the truth, many intelligence specialists will tell you, because people being tortured will say anything they think the torturer wants to hear. Thus, the "information" is useless. Just as rape is not about sex, torture is not about intelligence. Instead, both are about power, dominance, hatred and humiliation.
The article corroborates what George Hunsinger, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, said in a Jan. 31, 2005, commentary in the Baltimore Sun: Torture "sins against God and against humanity created in God's image. It degrades everyone involved -- planners, perpetrators and victims."
Let's abolish U.S.-sponsored torture now.
JEAN ATHEY
Brookeville
Everything American, everything taught to us by our parents, whether 10th generation or immigrants who have chosen to be citizens, every religion, every ethical philosophy, everything in the Constitution emphasizes this basic concept: liberty and justice for all. For every person--including our enemies. Justice may demand imprisonment, but it cannot and must not include cruel and unusual punishment.
As an older citizen born to Greek immigrants who passionately cherished and constantly emphasized the values set forth in the U.S. constitution, I suffer with military intelligence specialist Tony Langouranis and with every American who has been convinced by our misguided leaders that it is justifiable to disregard the principles on which this nation was founded, out of fear or out of revente.
MARGUERITE RHODES
Washington
The article referred to interrogators as suffering from "a clash of values" after subjecting prisoners to systematic torture. Call me old-fashioned, but we used to have a work for that phenomenon: conscience.
EMILY SMITH
Annandale
Torture by Another Name
This letter was written by a NRCAT member, in response to the news that Bush had approved certain techniques for interrogation that most people would consider torture:
Washington Post, Wednesday, August 1, 2007; A16
Regarding the July 21 front-page article "Bush approves New CIA Methods":
Forms of abuse innocuously referred to by government officials and others as "enhanced interrogation techniques" should be seen for what they are: torture. This includes simulated drowning, sexual humiliation, stress positions, sensory overload and deprivation, and sleep deprivation. Such mistreatment can have devastating physical and psychological consequences and from a medical perspective, as well as moral and legal ones, are torture. Government officials and interrogators who would use such techniques should know this.
It is well documented that such methods do not provide useful and accurate information. Further, when we condone, sanitize or rationalize torture, no matter what we call it, it cheapens us as a society. It also puts in harm's way innocent civilians around the world who live under regimes that routinely torture. I know from colleagues who care for torture victims in other countries that the United States' credibility in speaking out against torture has been profoundly compromised in recent years.
President Bush's recent executive order, which woefully lacks detail about which interrogation techniques are permitted and which are not, will do little to restore this credibility.
ALLEN S. KELLER
Director, Bellevue-New York University Program for Survivors of Torture
New York