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Lafayette Hill
Chris Satullo claims we should not celebrate Independence Day because of our dishonorable torturing and allowing the torture of prisoners to gain information ("A not-so-glorious Fourth," July 1). But is it more honorable to allow tens, even hundreds of thousands of Americans to die rather than to twist the arm of a terrorist who knows how to stop it?
Satullo's view of honor holds us to a suicidal standard in the world of fanatical terrorism and increasingly powerful weapons. He mentioned the "sacred honor" our Founders pledged but I doubt that honor included allowing a preventable sudden incineration of Philadelphia.
We have freed or preserved the freedom of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Now we must not only continue that work in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must also save our own nation. Only unnecessary defeat is dishonorable.
Marguerite H. Sexton
Hollywood
Thank you, Chris Satullo, for having the audacity to be a true patriot in a land of flag-on-the-lapel nationalists. Patriotism is calling out one's country when things are going so painfully awry. Nationalism is waving the flag no matter what one's country does. History showed us what happened in nationalist Germany.
This country placed its future in the hands of an overgrown frat boy. How many generations will it take for us to recover from our national carelessness? How dare we brag when we have been responsible for so much wrong in the world?
Mark Furlong
Pottstown
It has been accepted as doctrine that aggressive interrogation techniques like waterboarding, stress positioning and sleep deprivation are examples of torture. But those techniques are routinely applied to our special forces during training so they are prepared for what might happen in the field. I have never read of a claim by a member of our elite military that he was subjected to torture.
Chris Satullo confuses our methods with those of our enemies, who put blowtorches to the back of victims' heads and slice off fingers and toes when not wiring genitalia for electroshock. Unfortunately, the type of propaganda that Satullo dispenses is mother's milk to the al-Qaedas of the world. It has no doubt cost American lives.
John D. Froelich
Upper Darby
I agree with about a quarter of what Chris Satullo said. But where he is tragically wrong is in pretending that the war on terror is some sort of anticriminal activity.
The United States should have created a non-military-combatant category to cover Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees who were not covered under the Geneva Conventions, which apply to those fighting for legitimate armies.
Had this war's detainees been extended some of the rights of POWs, there would be no garbage about needing criminal charges during a war. Much of the rules should have been the same as during World War II, when combatants were held until their side surrendered.
Under a semi-POW regimen, most of this sad story never would have happened, and it would be clear that the U.S. Constitution did not apply to them, any more than it did to WWII POWs.
Alphonse J. DiGiovanni
Newtown Square
Is Chris Satullo saying that waterboarding, snarling dogs restrained by their trainers, and theft of sleep are somehow the equivalent of 9/11, when people jumped to their deaths from the upper floors of the World Trade Center rather than be incinerated, when about 3,000 died, when a portion of the Pentagon lay in ruin, and when the heroic people of Flight 93 gave their lives to save others?
No other nation has ever shed so much blood or given lives for the well-being of others. Contrary to Satullo's admonitions, I will proudly have American flags on my lawn today and I hope millions of others do so as well.
Msgr. Francis X. Meehan
Wynnewood
Chris Satullo's column is commentary at its best. No false balancing, but honest forthright conviction on the evil of torture! Abhorrence of torture reflects my church's teaching, yes; but it reflects something at the heart of the world - a human ethic universally validated by a corpus of secular, religious, national and international consensus.
A special request: that The Inquirer not allow the issue to die from lack of traction; that it not allow the issue to be trivialized as though it were some merely partisan controversy.
Peter Beckschi
Newtown
How dare you? How dare you try to take away from us the years of trials and tribulations this democracy has experienced and survived? How dare you take away the dignity of us who struggle and work every day, love our families, and even disapprove of Congress and the administration from time to time? How dare you rub our noses in our inadequacies when multitudes strive to reach our shores and enjoy our society?
You dare because we are a free people with God-given rights that you enjoy in abundance. That's why I am celebrating the Fourth of July. Happy birthday, America!
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