To the Editor:

Yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car. It was, Torture is wrong. (Not sure the exact statement). I asked the owner of the car where she had obtained it. She stated that she thought it was from the Democratic Party. I thanked her for displaying it and we talked.

Today, in the mail I received a 10 card pack of photo cards detailing the Bush Torture Team put out by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The enclosed letter stated, The purpose of these cards is to bring attention to the people who should really be under investigation. Collect and prosecute them all. You probably know some of the characters; Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, etc. The back of the cards detail some of their evil deeds sanctioning torture and engaging in an illegal war.

Also today, I read a nine-page article in Harpers magazine about the U.S. intelligence and how America makes its enemies disappear. Many facts that are truly appalling. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded. 183 times. Mohammed later said, I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear.

Evidently, many innocent people are picked up, placed in foreign prisons, brutally tortured and often, killed. The stories should make a sane person shudder. The article also stated that some countries like Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and Uruguay eventually were toppled by popular protest, in large part because the people became aware that their leaders had profited from their suffering. Exact quote: Pakistanis today appear no less aware that this type of transaction is occurring in their country. Indeed, a recent poll found that the only nation they find more threatening than India, whose nuclear missiles point directly at them, is the United States. And they have begun to hold their leaders accountable for the association.

When will we hold the Bush Administration accountable?

Bob Shiffer stated on his Sunday program for the second time that, It costs the U.S. a million dollars per soldier per day to keep in Iraq or Afghanistan and this does not include the private contractors. No amount of oil can come close to justifying this.

Now the Republicans want to stop health care reform claiming expense. Take 1/20th of the expenditure of the wars and we Americans would have a health program equal or better than Canada, France, England and the other Western countries. Stop the torture. Stop the wars.

Dr. Rita D. Rimmer