Letters: The road back from Bush-era torture

Re “Torture — never again,” Opinion, July 30

Morris D. Davis states that as we “mark the 10th anniversary of the effort by the Bush administration to justify torture, remembering that as a nation founded on religious and moral values, we must work to ensure that U.S. government-sponsored torture never occurs again.”

President Obama has avoided the torture issue by depriving suspected terrorists of all their rights — by simply killing them with drones. With this approach, we have killed innocent civilians and have been deprived of future intelligence.

Does Davis feel that targeted murder is better suited to our nation’s “religious and moral values”?

Janet Polak

Beverly Hills

Davis is correct that America should consign President Bush’s “torture memos” to history. To do so, the American people deserve to know how the CIA interrogated detainees after9/11.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is nearing completion of a 5,000-page report, which it should vote to publish with as few redactions as possible. Only by knowing what happened in our names can we move forward and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

C. Dixon Osburn

Washington

The writer is the director for law and security at Human Rights First.

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