D'Amato wrong on torture prosecution

To the Editor:

Regarding Al D'Amato's column, "Politics may be win-win, but CIA, American people lose" (Sept. 3-9):

D'Amato relies on the tried and true Republican Party tactic of fear-mongering in an effort to protect the people who perpetrated torture in our names from being held accountable for their actions. Furthermore, he uses innuendo and falsehoods to support his argument that we should simply put the actions of the Bush administration and the CIA behind us.

How can we present ourselves as a nation whose fundamental values are based on the rule of law when we simply ignore the lawlessness of those who acted in our name? The Nuremberg Tribunals, when judging the actions of the perpetrators of the Holocaust, ruled that simply because political leaders deemed actions "legal," it did not excuse them from the judgment of the world community. Just because political appointees buried deep in the Justice Department issued secret opinions that said that torture was permissible does not excuse either them or the people who followed those standards from facing the judgment of the American public if it is determined that they broke the law of the land.

D'Amato argues that the use of these torturous techniques "proved vital to the security of our nation following the 9/11 attacks." This assertion is completely unfounded. The recently released Inspector General's report stated that there is no evidence that such techniques provided any valuable information. And most professional interrogators have stated that such techniques motivate prisoners to say virtually anything that will stop the torture rather than providing actionable intelligence. The only people who believe that torture really works are those that believe Fox's "24" is actually true.