To the editor:

Growing up in the 1950s, we were told that what mainly differentiated our moral America from immoral communism was the communist ethic that the ends justified the means. The primary example was that the communists tortured people and we didn’t.

Fifty years later, Cheney and others betray this trust by trying to justify torture because it supposedly was useful.

Torture is simply, unambiguously immoral, most notably under the universal teaching of the Golden Rule (“Do not do to others what you would not want done to you”) and illegal under the Geneva Conventions among other laws.

Rationalizing torture by arguing that the ends justifies the means betrays the heart of any claim of American moral superiority. For the sake of our moral standing as a nation, and as a nation of respect for the law, let us demand the abolishment forever of the use of torture in our name.

Tom Ewell

Clinton