Madam, - US spokesmen are denying German claims that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that "mistakes" may occur when operating the policy of "extraordinary rendition". The case of Khaled el Masri, a German citizen, certainly seems one such mistake.
Mr el Masri was apparently taken off a bus in Macedonia and then spent the next five months in a dungeon in Afghanistan until the US authorities realised they had the wrong man. No compensation has been offered to Mr el Masri, needless to say. Instead, when released he was dumped at the side of a road in Albania.
It used be an axiom of the law that it is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent person be made to suffer. It has become clear that the US has abandoned (if not reversed) this principle, and is now set more firmly than ever on the road to fascism, if indeed it has not already arrived. - Yours, etc,
JOHN STAFFORD, Chesterfield Grove, Castleknock, Dublin 15.
Madam, - I am fully prepared to listen to George Dempsey's claims that the US does not use or condone torture, but his article in Monday's Irish Times does himself and his country no credit at all.
His piece is full of evasions and irrelevancies which do nothing to address legitimate concerns that torture is part of the "war on terror". US government documents and the investigative work of the US media in particular, offer abundant evidence of interrogation techniques that most reasonable people would consider torture.
So what is Mr Dempsey's definition of torture? According to a legal opinion sought by the White House, torture must involve physical damage that rises "to the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function". Under such a definition, pulling out somebody's fingernails isn't torture.
But these concerns are, according to Mr Dempsey, "bogus accusations out of an infantile leftist fantasyland". I would sooner trust the word of Arizona Republican senator John McCain: neither infantile nor leftist, he is a former torture victim who continues to press for a ban on all forms of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees, against the opposition of President Bush, who wants an exemption for the CIA.
Mr Dempsey closes his article with a litany of Saddam Hussein's crimes. What relevance does this have to the question of whether the US uses or condones torture? Saddam was a monstrous psychopath who ran a murderous regime. Nobody expects anything other than vileness from the world's worst rulers, from Saudi Arabia to Burma/Myanmar to North Korea. But the US has been, can be, and aspires to be an example of liberty to the world, and anyone who loves the principles of Washington and Jefferson can hardly stand to see them eroded. - Yours, etc,
LUKE MURPHY, Toronto, Canada.
Madam, - During the 1980s two US agents, Oliver North and Robert McFarlane, used illegal Irish passports during their missions to obtain funds for terrorist organisations in Central America. At no stage did the US government issue an apology or explanation for this crime perpetrated against this country.
Today, as pressure mounts on our Government to perform searches on CIA aircraft using Shannon airport, we are told we should accept the "categorical assurances" from Condoleezza Rice, that these flights are not being used for "anything untoward".
Perhaps someone could explain what has happened in the intervening years to make us accept those assurances. - Yours, etc,
DIARMAID MAC AONGHUSA, Shankill, Co Dublin.