What we've done is not torture

"Enhanced interrogation" techniques worked for us, just like they have for others over the centuries. We employed them, we are safer because of it and we have not become terrorists. Our intent was self-defense. The interrogated terrorists are alive and well.

We do not become like our enemies if we perpetrate upon them what they perpetrate upon us. War means killing each other. We shoot at them like they shoot at us - doesn't make us evil. These techniques do not parallel what our enemy has done and continues doing to us and even to their own people.

Water-boarding, in particular, is not life-threatening and causes no physical harm. Any soldier faces far more emotional upset simply by doing his job in combat.

Our own civilian police arrest perpetrators at gunpoint, or use a Taser, or ordinary handcuffs, physical restraints, tear gas, pepper spray, billy clubs and similar interrogation techniques used to gain confessions and information about criminal activity. These all become questionable if we now do a double-take on what our government has done to protect us from terrorists whose only goal is to kill as many of us as possible.

Mark Steven Zuelke

Fox River Grove