Martin: Torture isn't right



The justice department is starting to examine some occasions of murder and torture the CIA committed, and worse yet, some they outsourced.

Outsourcing torture and assassinations is similar to hiring a hit man from the Mafia. Just claiming it's for a good cause doesn't make it right.

I could hire a mobster to kill someone, and even though everyone may agree with me the person deserves to die, it's still not right.

Reasons for not engaging in torture of our "enemies" are like those preventing us from using the World War I mustard gas and phosgene, or the World War II atomic bombs. (They were weapons of mass destruction, WMDs.)

They may be sometimes effective and help us "win," but we recognize there are lines we mustn't cross, if we are to claim we're a moral, or even a Christian, nation.

To "win," first we must deserve to win.

The low-level CIA people who committed the acts of torture and murder may have been under orders from higher up. How high? I remember reading a quote from George W. Bush before our attack on Iraq, that he wholeheartedly approved of torture. He may not have ordered it, but if you work at a company, and the boss announces that coming in late is no big deal, how many people will start doing just that?

"I vas chuste following orderz" was discredited at the Nuremburg trials. When I was in the Army, we were trained what we could, and couldn't, do with prisoners.

The "twin" attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan - were they to avenge attacks by a few individuals on our "twin" towers? So far (and it's not over yet) these wars killed more U.S.'ers than 9-11, and almost a million Middle Easterners, most of them innocent of any wrongdoing.

A. Martin,

Merrifield