Turn Spotlight On Torture

WOW, Metro Santa Cruz scooped every paper in the country with the news that besides Jeppesen, there are other companies that help facilitate the CIA's torture flights ("Breaking Jeppesen," News&Views, June 20). Diane Solomon's excellent article calls them out by name: Air Routing International, Baseops Flight Planning, and Universal Weather and Aviation Inc. Hopefully anti-torture activists in Houston, where at least two of these companies do business, can turn the public spotlight on the illegal and immoral business going on in their city.

Thank you for publishing real investigative journalism.

Charlotte Casey, South Bay Coalition to Stop Torture, San Jose

Not Another 70 Years

THE FILM review of The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Film, April 18) was quiet realistic. The violence in the film is used to build sympathy for the Irish efforts to ward off their occupiers. I felt a sympathy for the natives and their interest in ridding their homeland of foreign invaders. I left the film with a better sense of the roles martyrdom and ideology play by those will to sacrifice their lives to fight occupation ... especially after they have faced torture. I better understand the willingness of Iraqis in their Civil War to rid themselves of foreign occupation. Let's hope we don't take 70 years to get a peace treaty and end the "civil" war like the British have taken in Ireland.

Jim E. Kelly, San Jose

America, You're Gone

RE Dianne Feinstein defense contracts: As an American who is a political junkie, so much so that when I'd finally learned enough about my government, I fled the country, I always thought that Dianne Feinstein was evil. Now we know that she really is. My adopted little brother fought in Iraq for a year and a half for this? Goodbye, America, you're gone.

Shaun Riddle, Nicaragua

The Truth About Oceans

FIRST, I would like to thank you for your informative website. I just finished reading Richard von Busack's Dec. 6, 2001, article about Ocean's Eleven. At the end of the article von Busack mentions that the story was written by Ted Griffin.

Actually that is not true. Ocean's Eleven was written by George Clayton Johnson and Frank M. Robinson.

If you had seen the original filmed in the early '60s you would discover that Griffin simply changed elements of a fun story to fit into the present time.

It is remarkable that Griffin gets full credit for a story that Johnson and Robinson originally sold to Peter Lawford for about $1,500.

It would be great if your magazine would give some credit to the people who actually create these things. Inasmuch as there is now an Ocean's Twelve and Thirteen it would be a great service to the community if you could correct this for all your readers.

Mark Gottlieb, Royal Oak, Mich.

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