We have recently been reading and hearing praise for the use of torture. Apparently it doesn't matter that torture has been illegal and immoral for decades in America. Our country has jailed and even executed people for waterboarding/torturing American prisoners in the past. A Texas sheriff and three deputies were sent to prison in the 1980s for waterboarding a prisoner in their jail. We are party to the Geneva Conventions. This has set us apart as a moral and lawful nation.

One of the excuses used by gasbag radio and Fox News for embracing torture now is that supposedly we got important information by waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed more than 180 times, during which he "confessed" to a plot to fly an airplane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles. (This has since morphed into George Bush saving Los Angeles itself.) The Bush administration claimed they foiled this plot by KSM in early 2002. One problem -- Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.

There are many distortions of facts and outright lies being bandied about to frighten and mislead Americans into accepting and excusing the use of torture. This is an important subject that deserves only the facts and a grasp of our history defining who we are as Americans.

Vida Melstad

1900 Lockey Ave.