Torture report was dishonest, irresponsible

I find the recent release by Dianne Feinstein and the Democratic Senators of the report on enhanced interrogation totally reprehensible at best, intellectually dishonest, and irresponsible in the extreme.

First, the conduct of interrogation of captured enemy combatants after 9/11 was thoroughly vetted and approved by the Justice Department at the time. In addition it has subsequently been investigated by a Justice Department openly hostile to that of the previous administration. Add to that the fact that at the time immediately following 9/11 we as citizens demanded that our government protect us from another attack at all costs.

I was here at the time and I remember. Do you? No one was calling for limitations on methods used. Still the government took the high road and implemented a program that has withstood intense scrutiny since then and found to be sound.

Second, what began as a bipartisan investigation by the Senate soon proved to be the usual witch hunt, causing all of the Republicans to withdraw their names from the final report, although several voted in favor of the report's release and turned their efforts to support of the minority response.

Third, a point that I have not heard made by anyone to date, not even on Fox News, is that the people subjected to enhanced interrogation were without exception terrorists, none of whose organizations, al-Qaida, Taliban, ISIS, NUSRA Front, etc., have signed on to any international agreements on treatment of prisoners or enemy combatants. These people have beheaded people, hung their bodies from bridges, or dragged lifeless bodies through the streets of their gutted villages. For the Senate Democrats to even pretend to suggest moral equivalence of things like waterboarding, loud music, or sleep deprivation to such abhorrent brutal acts as the above is beyond the pale.

Jeff Tenwinkel

Hoffman Estates