Madam, - It is the view of the current US administration that its agents are not prohibited by domestic or international law from using interrogation procedures traditionally viewed as cruel, inhumane or degrading on detainees who are not American citizens so long as the procedures are not used within US jurisdiction.
I hope that American judiciary will find otherwise when the matter comes before the courts shortly at the suit of the American Civil Liberties Union against the Central Intelligence Agency.
Irrespective of the outcome of that case, it would be intolerable that Ireland should facilitate the use of torture, whether it be technically legal or not, by permitting the transport of detainees through Shannon Airport.
Mr Dermot Ahern's display of concern, by raising the matter with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was a sham. He pronounced himself satisfied, on the word of Ms Rice, that Shannon is not being used for any untoward purposes and that the US was not breaching any international conventions on torture.
Mr Ahern knows, or should know, perfectly well that the official position of the current US administration would permit Ms Rice to give him such assurances even in circumstances where detainees were daily being transported through Shannon Airport to be tortured.
I conclude that Mr Ahern asked questions designed to allow Ms Rice to give the utterly disingenuous answers with which Mr Ahern disgracefully professed himself satisfied so that our Government could hide behind the same flimsy fig-leaf.- Yours, etc,
TERRY WALSHE, The Curragh, Co Kildare.
Madam, - Courtesy of the US State Department and Condoleezza Rice, we have a terminological update: Lies, damned lies, and renditions. - Yours, etc,
DAVID GRANT, Mount Pleasant, Waterford.
Madam, - To render, in the meat trade, means "to extract the fat by melting". The Americans' choice of words seems significant. Should we be facilitating their meat trade - whether or not the meat is contaminated? - Yours, etc,
RICHARD REID, Rathgar Avenue, Dublin, 6.
Madam, - Condoleezza Rice assures us that the Bush administration does not condone torture and is not involved in any way in the torture of terrorist suspects. I suppose it depends on one's definition of torture. This is the same administration which last week was trying to get an exemption for the CIA from the proposed Congress ban on "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of prisoners. Draw your own conclusions. - Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH, Blackrock, Cork.
Madam, - If it can be shown that Poland was involved in the torturing of prisoners on behalf of the US, then that country has no place as a member of the EU. - Yours, etc,
FRANK BARR, Glasnevin Woods, Ballyboggan Road, Dublin 11.