Selective Compassion

In “Bush Cites Case of U.S. Woman in Peru Meeting” (June 27) you state that President Bush urged Peruvian President-elect Alejandro Toledo to take “humanitarian” concerns into account when deciding whether to intervene in the case of an American woman (31-year-old Lori Berenson) convicted of collaborating with terrorists.

Would this urgent request be harking back to his former years as governor of Texas, where he applied similar compassionate and humanitarian concerns toward the countless, hapless death row victims, especially if they happened to be mentally deficient, retarded, that is, feeble-minded?

Jack C. Caskey

Anaheim