Our Readers Respond...

To The Editor:

I applaud your article on fraud at former DA Jeanine Pirro’s office. This hardly surprises me.

I worked as a civil servant and was fired to trumped up charges. They even erased a court stenographer’s transcript. Violations of DUE PROCESS like mine have occurred over and over; its shocking how casual everyone involved was. My case [Kampel vs Westchester County] was a free for all. The dynamics kept anyone from taking the blame for anything. The case Karen Bendell vs. Westchester County Healthcare Corp in 2000 was the same freefor-all. She was paid a settlement by the hospital to drop this case to avoid exposure. It was written up in the New York Law Journal at the time.

Please keep up your investigative reporting, the press’ free efforts help stomp out the ugly corruption and politics in county government. Our exwell-polished DA should hit the text books on due process and start learning some real FAMILY VALUES.

Bob Kampel
Mount Vernon

To the Editor:

I just read my first issue of The Westchester Guardian. I enjoy your paper
and believe that you are providing the public with a great public service.

Thanks for doing your part to keep the people of Westchester more
informed about the important issues facing our county.

You have an excellent team: Richard Blassberg is respected county-wide
for his efforts – uncovering corruption and government abuses. Maureen
Keating Tsuchiya is a tireless advocate for the disabled and for government
reforms. The Westchester Guardian hopefully will work hard to keep our
government honest and responsive.

Best wishes.

Paul Feiner
Greenburgh Town Supervisor

To the editor:

Fred Polvere’s August 31st Once We Were Giants was valuable and needed! That we did not torture and treat inhumanely the prisoners we took in war is one reason that the United States used to be the best country in the world.

Why has America changed, that people now accept the ascendance of an agenda that includes brutal treatment of captives? That the new generation of soldiers practices that brutality? As Mr. Polvere points out, in Vietnam we treated prisoners better.

One reason is that for years our government and its corporate sponsors have propped up some brutal regimes in some other countries. We even taught people how to become disciplinarians for Latin American dictators, at Fort Benning, Georgia. Cannot we say that one road to Abu Ghraib starts at Fort Benning?

But that alone does not America’s move toward participation in atrocities?

Yet we are told that for the past 30 years, most Americans have had the best and most advanced life anybody has ever had. We are told that we are more comfortable, loved, wanted and wantable, free, tolerant and tolerated, and progressive than any society has ever been. We have “achieved” the spending of most of our waking hours in front of video screens, the prevalence of the “correct pleasures” (sex, gambling and booze), abortion, domination by powerful multi-national corporations, air-conditioning, relief from the “burden” of walking even a short distance away from one’s home and yard, relief from the “burden” of learning historical events, and
“feel-good” drugs (both illegal and legal). Where is the greater compassion, generosity, humaneness, mellowness, and good behavior that such “achievements” are supposed to generate? And many of our military peopleare young enough to have known almost nothing but our “advanced” society.

Using information-gathering as an excuse for torture is not valid. If you make someone confess to a crime, whether he/she did it or not, then you are no closer to
learning the truth than you were before the interrogation.

If a person tells you information to stop being tortured, there is no guarantee how true the information is. The “informer” could be making up something that has no basis for fact. If he/she “confesses” to planning a monstrous terrorist attack, he/she might have thought up the attack just a few minutes ago in the interrogation
room. Suppose someone under torture names “coconspirators”.

Those people might be fictitious, might be people the “informant” has a grudge against or is in a money or property dispute with, or might be people not involved in any conspiracy the informant knows of. If the informant is really a terrorist, he might under torture inform on everybody except those who really are his co-conspirators.

Jeanette Wolfberg
Mount Kisco