Readers Write: (Dec. 11): CIA report, Affordable Care Act

The Dec. 10 headline "CIA misled the nation about futile cruelty" was wrong in two important respects.

First, the CIA did not mislead the nation. The enhanced interrogation tactics used were specifically requested and approved by a bipartisan committee in the Senate following 9/ 11, and the CIA legally carried out the program (if specific elements were violated by some, that is a different story, and should be addressed). Further, the approved tactics have all been used on our own forces in training (including on me, as a naval aviator, during survival school).

Second, the program was anything but "futile," and in fact led to substantial information, including the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. The Senate report itself is potentially misleading, having had no input directly from those involved with the program. The release of the report itself is misguided at best, and inaccurate reporting further enhances the damage done to our nation's security and those who bravely carried out what were mandates of our own elected representatives.

The writer is executive director of the Defense Alliance.

• • •

The Star Tribune's front-page articles about CIA "torture" left out important facts. Among them:

The Senate Intelligence Committee failed to interview any CIA employees, despite five years of investigation. Not one single soul! (Can you spell B-I-A-S?)

By ignoring such facts, the Star Tribune misled its readers about the objectivity of the committee's "findings." In fact, its articles make Rolling Stone's recently discredited piece about a gang rape in Virginia look like solid reporting!

• • •

I find it bewildering that people in this country are wringing their hands over the CIA report. Has anyone connected the dots to realize that there is a reason why we have not been attacked again in the last 13 years? Sen. Dianne Feinstein knew all along what was happening and then brings out this report to embolden our enemies and shame us. And yet, this would be the same lady, who, if we were attacked again, would scream that the CIA failed us.

And for those of you shocked by this report, has it ever dawned on you what kind of country you live in? Can you even imagine Russia, Iran or China telling their people what they do to get information? Their societies are not free, and they don't just torture their prisoners, they out-and-out kill them. You cannot have it both ways. And yet, that is the demand of the left.

• • •

• • •

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said the report would put Americans abroad in danger. I think what will more likely put Americans in danger for decades to come is our bombing and armed occupation of Muslim countries for the past 10 years, which has created hundreds of thousands of amputees, orphans and refugees. Violence begets more violence. The printed word does not.

• • •

While horrific, the Senate's report on CIA torture is hopefully a first step toward restoring America's tarnished global reputation.

In the past few years, it has seemed to me that many Americans would simply like to pretend that the things we did after 9/11, such as CIA torture and the invasion of a country uninvolved with 9/11, had never happened.

With luck, this report will cause America to do some soul-searching and take the next step of bringing those who violated the basic rights of fellow human beings (some of whom had no or only tangential connections to Al-Qaida) to task.

Maybe then our condemnation of human rights violations by China, Russia and other autocratic regimes will begin to carry weight.

• • •

While many people are rightfully outraged by the failure to indict police for their illegal actions, the torture report reminds us that cops are on the bottom of the food chain and that the major criminals are found at the top. Yet, it is even more unlikely that any CIA official or their executive branch superiors will be brought to the dock to answer for their actions.

At the end of World War II, many Americans were incredulous at the claim of ordinary Germans that they knew nothing about the torture and murder committed by their Nazi rulers. But those Germans could at least point to the totalitarian controls they lived under in the Third Reich, which made effective protest impossible. Obviously, we don't have that excuse.

After watching Jonathon Gruber's Dec. 9 testimony before the House Oversight Committee, I am more convinced than ever that the approximately 2,700-page Affordable Care Act was a deceitful, bait-and-switch bill shoved down our throats by Congress without even one Republican vote.

Reminds me of Federalist 62, wherein James Madison said: "It will be of little avail to the people, that laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood … or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow."

The difference between Madison and now might be that maybe Madison trusted legislators would act in the best interests of and with the consent of the governed, rather than behind the veil of good intentions.