A READER WRITES that, in his opinion, the questions Jesse Ventura asked about waterboarding were the least uncomfortable that could have been asked. And, he adds, we can’t “descend to the moral level” of Saddam Hussein, since we’ve already passed that point:

“Why is the subject of torture being confined to waterboarding? Other forms were used in Iraq, as everyone knows.

“And in terms of increasingly ‘resembling Saddam Hussein,’ he was convicted for the murder of 148 people committed a year before the U.S. began supporting him.

“Where does the civilian death count in Iraq and Afghanistan stand today? Even though death figures become suddenly vague, unlike those of Saddam, it is certainly more than 148 people who have been murdered as a direct result of federal orders. Claiming all were ‘terrorists’ is the same justification Saddam used. Claiming ‘casualties of war’ is bogus: No declaration of war exists outside of federal and commercial media spin and lingo.

“Taking a snapshot of downtown Baghdad a year before and then a year after Saddam fell from power, given both forms of central power sat in palaces, which picture would look more conducive to public happiness? It seems to me that if the U.S. federal government more resembled Saddam in Iraq, it would be a change for the better.”