Mona,
I occasionally write for the Logansport, Indiana Pharos Tribune, who often run your columns.
But you make a mistake that puts you in line with the likes of Hannity and Rush. You conservatives
are wrong when you claim that Democrats and Liberals want to see failure in Iraq. How can you
think that any patriot wants failure and more death in any USA endeavor? It is not believable.
It makes you look false. YOU could write an article about how liberals couldn't possibly want failure,
and you'd look more in touch.
greg hildebrandt

Ms. Charen: I call. I see your "severe doubts" and raise those by experience.
First an American soldier's experience...
"After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. 'Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death.'"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html
Second, mine. I nearly drowned about 15 years ago. I was snorkeling off the coast in Cancun and didn't realize that the undertow had carried me out two hundred or so yards from the shore. I panicked and fought the undertow just long enough to completly wear myself out. Swallowing sea water and imagining I would never see my loved ones again I was fortunately rescued by a hotel-employed life guard. To this day I cannot stand to be in water where my feet cannot touch bottom. I break into a panic attack when I am in almost any situation with a perceived life risk. Its embarassing, but I have no control over my reaction to even the potential for drowning. I have honestly been scarred by my experience with near-drowning.
I can only imagine the mental status of those so tortured.
I am appalled that you would refer to waterboarding with such a flippant, partisan position-serving remark. And shame on you for reverting to a tactic that my children abandoned in their teens: "They hit me first!".
The America I know doesn't condone torture and doesn't inch up to the precipice of evil behavior simply because it is afraid. I am not naive enough to believe that atrocities didn't occur in WWII and such behavior has been documented in American military encounters of my lifetime, but never -to my knowledge- has torture or anything close to torture been condoned by our government at the highest levels.
To me, your argument rings hollow and I suggest that you spend 5+ years in Gitmo "getting fat" or undergo waterboarding before you trivialize such treatment from our "shining city on a hill".

Mona: You have "severe doubts as to whether waterboarding constitutes torture." Will you retain these doubts when some foreign government does it to our citizens? If someone undergoing the procedure has a pre-existing medical condition and should die during the procedure, is that OK? Waterboarding is an ancient form of torture and it has been used for centuries because asphyxiating someone with water is effective because it is so terrifying. Why do you think the US military has always banned it? I guess your partisan loyalties to the current administration are more important than a devotion to the values and ideals that make the US constitution a beacon for freedom-loving people around the world.
Secondly, why do you have so much faith in big government? Because one department from one branch of the US government tells you that they only torture the bad people, you accept it completely on faith? Do you think the government ever makes mistakes? Do you think that the checks and balances designed into our entire system are there because of the potential for mistakes? What do you think you do to someone you are torturing when they continue to fail to provide useful information? You probably torture them some more in an attempt to break them. Imagine blacking out from lack of air as they waterboard you, but you've already told them everything you know.

Here again, you demonstrate a profound lack of insight into why we are different than our enemies. It is our adherence to checks and balances, due process and rule of law that differentiates us. We do not treat our enemies in accordance to our own rules as a form of reciprocity (since our enemies do not value them): we treat our enemies in accordance to our own rules because it is the essence of what we are. When we abandon our most civilized traits, we become like our enemies. People like you who would abandon our values due to fear and/or anger constitute a far greater threat to American ideals than any suicide bomber or terrorist ever will. Your corrosive subversion of our values and partisanship lead us away from our true beliefs. Shame on you and all the political shills like you on both the left and right wing of the debate. You make us weaker.