TODAY'S LETTERS: Readers Respond To Waterboarding Column

By: E&P Staff Readers wrote in today about a column from last week about waterboarding.

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What Joseph Galloway describes meets my definition of torture, because it's drowning. The technique I term waterboarding is a piece of cloth over the face and a canteen of water, stimulates the limbic nervous system, isn't drowning and doesn't meet my test for torture.

I've been surprised to discover that none of the politicians raging against waterboarding has a definition of torture that's a sentence or two long. All of them refer to various international treaties and subjective matters.I'm curious to know if Mr. Galloway has one.

Mary McLemore


Someone take Mr. Galloway aside and tell him a bit about the tortures of being beheaded, having fingers cut off one at a time, or perhaps having a hole drilled through one's skull with a hand drill. These are some of the treatments one might receive at the hands of Islamist Terrorists. Perhaps he approves of men being tortured and the session being concluded with the victim being dragged through the streets and in conclusion (dead or alive) having the body lit on fire.

Frankly I don't give a fig what we need to do to get information that will save lives as long as lives are saved. Waterboarding is not administered for the purpose of punishing or torturing an enemy it is done to get information that will save the lives of soldiers, civilians and fellow human beings in general. I wonder how hard Mr. Galloway would fight to save his family from criminals if he were faced with a home invasion? Where would he stop? Would he consider what might be too cruel an act to commit in order to save his family?

Why can't these scum buckets give it a rest and stop trying to soften the way for enemies who have killed thousands and are vying to kill more?

Americans are losing their love of their Country and their fellow citizens.

Tony Mangan
Pike Road, Ala.


To Joe Galloway: Your recent column on waterboarding, published at Editor and Publisher, was so well put, and honest, that I find myself eager to hear more from you. Also, your interview this past week on Minnesota Public Radio's "Midday" program (or was it on NPR) was enlightening, and even heartening - a rare feeling for me these days, I'm afraid.

Thanks so much for your willingness to speak out; you are a great inspiration to me, and to others.

Anne Morse
Winona, Minn.


I was a "Soldier Once and Young", Company A, 228th ASHB, 1st Air Cav, June 67-June 68 (Chinook crewchief/door gunner). We got lecures by our commanders of the horrors of what they (NVA and the Soviets) did to POW's as reasons of "Why We Fight". I was not aware "we" waterboardered then, but I was aware that we threw "them" out of helicopters. But at least such behaviour was not the policy of the CIC.

I thought I was fighting in 'Nam for freedom, and now I find the CIC thinks doing what the Soviets did is fine. I'm appalled by all of this. We might not get "actionable intelligence" out of POW's by treating them by the standards of the Geneva Convention (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), but at least we'd be doing the right thing, the moral Christian thing.

It's never too late to apologize for having done wrong. Instead of trying to decide if the Turks committed genocide on the Armenians back in 1915 we could apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. IF Hiroshima was "right", then My Lai was "right". Neither was right in my opinion.

I'd like someone in the media to pose this question to Bush: "If this GWOT is such a damn fine deal, and seeing as how we have trouble getting enough recruits for the military, why haven't your daughters joined up?" Sure they'd be targeted by the enemy, but didn't Bush say "Bring them on?"

Wade Kane
Crescent City, Fla.