The February issue of Harper's Magazine reported that out of the more than

48,000 Iraqis detained by coalition forces, only 1.5 have been convicted of any crime. The Feb. 13 issue of the National Journal has several features that revealed how many, if not most, of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are likely innocent of any crime or ill intent against Americans. At most, 20 percent of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners are members of Al-Qaeda, the rest were merely Taliban foot-soldiers or individuals unfortunate enough to be randomly captured and handed over to Americans by bounty hunters. Indeed, eight Gitmo prisoners have been cleared of being "enemy combatants," but still they remain arbitrarily detained with little hope for due process.

For Tom Kuehn to justify the documented abuses against these prisoners by demonizing the innocent along with the bad in his Friday letter to the editor is unequivocally unconscionable and makes me question his worth as a human being. Perhaps he can redeem himself and prove the sincerity of his beliefs by making a reservation in any one of our extrajudicial detention centers for an indefinite period of time. If sodomizing, torturing and locking up innocent people is necessary to protect people like Kuehn, then he of all people should have no problem with the proposition.

Gad Onyeneho
University undergraduate

Tom Kuehn's Friday letter to the editor criticizing the Feb. 20 editorial "Ashamed to be American" is, according to the best evidence available to us, wrong about the facts pertaining to the Guantanamo detainees.

Among other things, Kuehn writes, "The people at Guantanamo are not U.S. citizens, but rather people who were captured on the battlefield trying to kill Americans and others." First, it is worth remembering that any information about the detainees is hard won - for the four years that these people have been held, the U.S. government has refused to voluntarily release information confirming their identities.

Second, the military itself in at least 38 cases determined that the evidence against detainees it had designated "enemy combatants" was insufficient to justify their continued detainment. The military, of course, has an interest in not admitting it has held or is holding innocent people.

Reputable analyses of data whose release has been mandated by court order suggests that over half (55 percent) of present Guantanamo detainees have no history of any hostile acts against the United States or its political allies - even when "hostile act" is defined, as the U.S. military has chosen to define it, to include fleeing U.S. forces (see, e.g., existing analyses of evidence presented in Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings mandated by the courts).

The weight of available evidence is cause for concern that innocent people have been detained - and possibly tortured - in our names. Common decency mandates that we be concerned about that. A lack of such concern is cause for shame.

Michelle Mason
University professor of philosophy

Freedom of speech

Regardless of one's opinion of the current conflict in which our armed forces are embroiled, it is not difficult to quickly form a negative opinion of those who would protest on behalf of any cause, let alone one as preposterous in this day and age as a retributive act of God, at a funeral of a fallen soldier.

Nevertheless, with the recent controversy caused by several cartoons fresh in our minds, we should be very wary of enacting legislation that begins limiting our freedoms of speech or electing leaders who support such measures.

While both of these examples involve particularly vulnerable groups in current affairs, we are thankfully still able to think and form opinions without having them directly constricted by those we elect to protect the rights of all citizens under our Constitution. Legislation that will attempt to protect our fallen soldiers by limiting free speech at their funerals only serves to dishonor the memory of one who died trying to bring this very freedom to others.

Robert A. Butterbrodt
University alumnus

'Midwest Heroes'

As a whole, I thought your Feb. 20 editorial about the "Midwest Heroes" ad, "Propaganda in the heartland," was very foolish, because you came down on the side of censorship. If you or other Democrats don't like the ads, the answer is to produce an answering ad, not suppression. More speech, not less speech. That's an elementary part of civics you obviously never learned.

The other foolish part was your closing non sequitur line, noting that Bush has spent more on public relations than Clinton. In addition to the fact it has nothing to do with anything in your editorial, I should think the reason for the discrepancy is obvious. Clinton was able to rely on buddies in the media to get his messages across, or to be more precise, he could rely on them not to distort his messages, whatever those messages may have been. Bush, quite to the contrary, faces open hostility from the press, and he must consequently use private means to spread his message.

David S. Farkas

Cleveland