: re: U.S. Says It Told Qatar Not to Pay a Ransom

           

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 8:52 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Says It Told Qatar Not to Pay a Ransom
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   I find no comfort in government assurances "that it told the Qataris not to pay a ransom for [Peter Theo Curtis]".  It smells of the same lawyerly evasions we were fed when we bought Raymond Davis out of a Pakistani jail. Is this one likewise a CIA hit-man, masquerading as a journalist this time, rather than as a diplomat? 

   The world will be a safer place when our government and any potential kidnappers understand the lesson of "Captain Phillips".  Taking an American hostage should get you a bullet in the head, and not a bag of cash.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/middleeast/us-says-it-told-qatar-not-to-pay-a-ransom.html?_r=0