I am writing in regard to the article “200 grieve death, torture of dog/Speaker calls for animal advocacy” (BDN, June 20) regarding the public display of mourning for that tortured dog in Aroostook County. There is no doubt that the dog’s terrible death was a cruel sick act. However, I am puzzled as to how people can trouble themselves to attend a dog’s funeral, send letters and make phone calls in outrage. Yet, when people are being tortured and humiliated in prison in Iraq or Guantanamo, there is no public outcry. What does this say about us?

I recall a comment that Sen. Susan Collins made in an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago on this subject. She said that lawmakers hear very little about this subject from the public. I don’t think that makes those shameful prison atrocities any less wrong, but it does mean that Donald Rumsfeld has still not been made to step down and the Bush administration is playing cover up and farming out the torture to less obvious locations.

The prisoner abuse has done everything to bring down the American reputation of fairness and compassion. My mother, a WAC in World War II, always said that the German troops were always so relieved to be taken prisoner by Americans because they knew they would be treated humanely. That good reputation is gone now. And there will be repercussions. You can think of those pictures of prisoners in Abu Ghraib as training photos. When you see U.S. citizens treated in kind, what kind of outcry will there be then?

Marion O. Arnold

Lamoine