Letters to the Editor

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Apr 30, 2009 | by Anonymous

Tea-bag parties exploited by hypocrites

The absurdities in the "tea bagging" parties on April 15 are too numerous to mention, but four will do:

-- These demonstrations were largely organized by lobbyists for the very "bailout" that was a focus of the protests. A couple of months ago, Dick Armey led efforts for AIGs more than half-a- trillion dollars in bailout funds. On April 15, there he was, pretending to have a principle.

-- The protesters mentioned nothing of "offshore" companies created by huge corporations solely to avoid paying hundreds of billions of dollars they would owe in taxes year after year. Those hundreds of billions are recovered off the backs of ordinary taxpayers -- including most of the protesters.

-- The protests attracted a disproportionate number of "causes" most Americans would shun, even oppose. I'm reasonably sure most readers of this newspaper would not willingly (or openly) affiliate with organizers seeking to secede from the union, or with Nazis (in uniform!), or groups promoting segregation, or groups pushing Taliban-style "limits" on women's rights. Read their signs!

-- I hope honest conservatives seek information on what these protests are really about, and resist efforts by the radical-right to hijack authentic conservatives for their own puerile purposes.

Philip A. Encinio

Berkeley

Torture simply doesn't work

Amid the plethora of claims lately put forth by torture apologists such as John Yoo, Michael Mukasey or Michael Hayden, is often the assertion that torture produced good information.

For example, according to Mukasey and Hayden, "Terrorist Abu Zubaydah ... was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of Sept. 11" (Wall Street Journal, April 17). In other words, they are claiming an instance of torture producing actionable intelligence.

However, a quick check of Jane Mayer's reliable history of this era, "The Dark Side," reveals that the information leading to Bin al Shibh's capture came through an Al Jazeera correspondent, Yousri Fouda, who interviewed him and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Karachi.

Fouda disclosed this information to the cousin of the Emir of Qatar, and the rest (as they say) is history. Torture had nothing to do with it.

In fact, I have not yet found an instance of torture yielding actionable intelligence that was not available through legitimate means. Such a thing may have happened, but this would be so rare as to make the use of torture not worth the cost.

Louise Specht

Berkeley

Ensure our torture-free future

After interviewing each victim privately, the International Red Cross lists more than a dozen distinctive tortures the CIA inflicted on 14 Guantanamo prisoners from foreign black holes of extraordinary rendition.

On April 20, the New York Times revealed that in 2002 waterboarding made Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner questioned in the CIA's "extraordinary renditions," agree to talk.

What did Abu Zubaydah reveal? A name: Ramzi Binalshibh.

So, unless Dick Cheney supplies verifiable instances when torturees' interrogations foiled imminent 9/11s, results of George Bush's and Barack Obama's wars to save us may boil down to a chain letter of suspects, each betrayed by the previous victim.

The whole business smacks of sadism. And the investigation demanded by Sen. Patrick Leahy should secure search warrants for cell phones, computers, and residences of John Yoo, Cheney, Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury and Donald Rumsfeld, one of whom, reportedly, always directed torture sessions from the United States.

If pictures of the actual torturing are discovered, saved for sadistic pleasure, Eric Holder must surely punish, thus ensuring our torture-free future.

Forgiving involuntary GI torturers seems fair, but medical- practice licenses of physicians who stood ready, in black holes, to perform tracheotomies on near-strangled victims need cancellation.

The way to end the war in Afghanistan is to take Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's hint and pacify our southern border, while stopping opium poppy culture in Afghanistan and contiguous India, by legalizing and taxing all drugs, ala FDR, as he did with alcoholic beverages.

Fighting could cease. Instead of troops, we could send seeds and funds to encourage food crops in Afghanistan.

Judith Segard Hunt

Berkeley

Fix for pirates

As a former Merchant Marine officer, I do not understand the fuss over pirates taking over ships and holding them for ransom.

Let's say I am the ship owner. By letting pirates board my ship, they are endangering the lives of my ship's crew. My ship, sitting in the water for months at a time, is not making money.

If I pay ransom, the pirates win. They will do the same thing to another ship, which is what they are doing, because they know they can get away with it. And my insurance goes up.

As a ship owner, I would employ four military experts with shoulder-fired missiles in six-hour watch shifts, as necessary. When the pirate ship approaches, all it takes is one squeeze of the trigger and it's all over.