Rutten writes on Agee

On the LAT opinion pages today, Tim Rutten writes that the death of traitor Phillip Agee reminds him that torture is wrong. The connection between Agee and torture is a stretch. Agee exposed thousands of CIA agents causing some deaths and he joined Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and finally died in a Cuban hospital. There is nothing heroic about Agee.

There is nothing good about torture but not everything unpleasant or disappointing is torture. Rutten says the CIA has tortured and he apparently knows it when he sees it. Chances are, he has never seen torture and has no direct knowledge that the CIA has tortured.