I have just read Paul Dunn's April 24 column, which endorses the party line about Americans who, he claims, used torture to save thousands of their countrymen.

First of all, stop blaming President Bush and Republicans when the Democrats, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, were informed in scores of meetings about techniques to be used by the government to acquire information from terrorists that was vital to our country's safety.

Among information we gleaned were a threatened bombing of Brooklyn Bridge and plans for destruction of the Los Angeles airport.

As usual, Dunn is light on facts. He claims that the Japanese military was tried after World War II for waterboard torturing of American prisoners. Tell that to the 75,000 troops in the march on Bataan where 18,000 died due to beheadings, cut throats, bayonet stabbing, rapes, disembowelments and being forced to walk for a week without food and water.

And don't compare the Holocaust with waterboarding. I've seen Auschwitz where three million Jews were slaughtered. They would have begged to be waterboarded with a doctor overseeing this so-called torture and remain alive while being well-fed with a nice bed.

In August 1945, some of us were on troop ships headed for the invasion of Japan when President Truman unleashed the atomic bomb that killed 140,000 in Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki lost 80,000 to the bomb. This was the horrendous cost to save two million U.S. casualties and three million Japanese casualties.

If by waterboarding, which neither kills nor maims, we acquire knowledge that might save thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives, are we justified in using the doctor-monitored procedure? Let's not have a catastrophe and then say, "We goofed."

Who then will be held responsible, Paul?

Monroe Diefendorf

Pinehurst