Madam, - As Amnesty calls for a more robust stance against the use of Irish airports for rendition flights (The Irish Times, May 28th), the current attitude of the Government is laughable.
I'm not sure which is more worrying: the acceptance of assurances from a discredited US administration or that fact our Government deems rendition OK as long as Ireland is not associated with it. Either way it is a morally bankrupt position.
The assurances are nothing but empty rhetoric and more so in light of the recently published report by the US department of justice which details FBI observations of interrogation techniques employed by the US military, CIA or local operatives in locations around the world.
It describes techniques which the FBI operatives found disturbing and against all they had been trained for. I can't imagine the FBI themselves shirk from applying robust interrogation techniques, which puts this report in context.
How sad that a country which was established to create a free society has now resorted to torture to maintain its own particular brand of freedom - freedom to facilitate the accumulation of wealth by unregulated corporations in the burgeoning security industry.
This is what happens when government is downsized in line with the goals of the Bush regime. - Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Church Road,
Blackrock,
Cork.