Where Does Water Boarding Fit into All of This?

To the Editor:
Having re-watched the horror of Sept. 11, 2001 for the past eight years must be like my father and mother re-watching Pearl Harbor. To live during those murders one probably doesn’t forget, nor should forget. That is why when one views the carnage, and knows of the heroic efforts of those on the planes and those on the ground, one wonders where “water-boarding” fits into all this.
Is it not enough to know that forces even more evil and sinister than American interrogators are today planning to do more than was done on Sept. 11, 2001? In each of our hearts we know this to be true. How? They tell us publicly and plot privately. The political deflection, by congressional and administration members calling criminal those who must every day work to shield us from another 9/11, is like telling each of the 9/11 dead that they died in vain.
The sanctimonious position of those who would castigate and denigrate the methods used to get information from, not political detainees, but rather murderers and plotters of murder and mayhem, seems to aid and abet the enemy, which truly they are. This is not even close to the shameful internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War Two. But, few of us know of the fear and anxiety Pearl Harbor caused.
We do know the fear and anxiety 9/11 has caused in any clear thinking person. In order to get information and plans, the methods used on individuals suspected of plotting further terrorist acts are justified for the protection and preservation of American lives. None of us knows, nor should we, of the many terrorist acts thwarted by such interrogation. There are those who protest the “innocents” held. There have been a few such incidents, but this is war. Many more real innocents were murdered on 9/11. The kind of methods used by our interrogators pale in the face of our enemies who would rather videotape a beheading. You know our government doesn’t need to tell us everything and if it did, probably those American political accusers would not believe it anyhow.
RANDALL BAUER
Stone Harbor