Torture Is Always Wrong Analysis

Many believe that those who plan on committing horrible crimes should be tortured in order to find out information on their plans. One of these people is Michael Levin. In his 1982 article “The Case for Torture.” Levin argued whether or not torture was wrong in any situation or not. Levin begins building his credibility by citing convincing facts and successfully employing emotional appeals. However, toward the end of the article, Levin makes it clear he wants his audience to come up with their own conclusion on torture.

In the article, “The Torture Myth,” Anne Applebaum explores the controversial topic of torture practices, focused primarily in The United States. The article was published on January 12, 2005, inspired by the dramatic increase of tensions between terrorist organizations and The United States. Applebaum explores three equality titillating concepts within the article. Applebaum's questions the actual effectiveness of using torture as a means of obtaining valuable information in urgent times. Applebaum explores the ways in which she feels that the United States’ torture policy ultimately produces negative effects upon the country. Applebaum's final question is if torture is not optimally successful, why so much of society believes it

In “The Case for Torture”, philosophy professor Michael Levin attempts to defend using torture as a means to save lives is justifiable and necessary. Throughout the article, Levin provides persuasive arguments to support his essay using clever wording and powerful, moving examples. However, the essay consists heavily of pathos, fallacies, and “What if?” situations that single out torture as the only method of resolution, rendering the argument hypothetical, weak, and unreliable for the city of San Jose as a whole community to follow.

Throughout the novel, the author, Barbara Kingsolver, uses various stylistic devices to create complex, symbolic, and significant literature that is also rich in meaning. In the assigned passage, Kingsolver incorporates several literary devices to capture the audience’s attention and leave them with something to think about post reading.

In the article, “Laying Claim to a Higher Morality,” Melissa Mae discusses the controversial topic of using torture as a part of interrogating detainees. She finds the common ground between the supporting and opposing sides of the argument by comparing two different sources, “Inhuman Behavior” and “A Case for Torture.” Mae includes clear transitions from each side of the argument and concise details to ensure that the essay was well constructed. The purpose of the essay is clear, and it is interesting, insightful, and unbiased.

In the News Week article from 1982 Michael Levin an American philosopher and university professor, presents his premises and his conclusion to why he personally believes that torture is morally permissible. In addition Levin’s expects others to understand why such thing as torture is a permissible act that everyone should incorporate as a morally acceptable act. To commence, Levin presents his topic by presenting the usual though that torture may seem barbaric; however, he then diverts to his issue, in which he personally states his believe in the quote “There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory.” Then, Levin moves on to explain his reasons for why he believes in such moral claim. For

David Figueroa Eng. 101A Professor Stern 4/20/15 Final draft In conclusion, in discussions of torture, one controversial issue has been on the use of it. On one hand, the people against torture argue that it is cruel and unusual punishment. On the other hand, those for torture argue that it should be used for the greater good. Others even maintain that under extreme circumstances, it may be admissible if it can save American lives. My own view is that no one should be subjected to cruel punishment because it is not only illegal, unreliable, ineffective, time consuming, it also has too many flaws that could potentially ruin innocent lives. The definition of torture is any act, whether physical or emotional, or maybe both, is intentionally subjected to a specific individual or a group for many reasons. Most of these reasons that torture is administered is for extracting information from an individual or just for punishing him/her for a crime that he/she has committed or is suspected of committing. The use of torture can be used to intimidate a person to give information that may be beneficial for a nation. The use of torture has been used for many centuries. The purposes of using torture have changed over the years as well as the methods in which a person is tortured. One crucial piece that has been established that separates us human beings from barbarians is the prohibition of using torture. There are many reasons why torture has been deemed a crime now in society. There are

Torture is known as the intentional infliction of either physical or psychological harm for the purpose of gaining something – typically information – from the subject for the benefit of the inflictor. Normal human morality would typically argue that this is a wrongful and horrendous act. On the contrary, to deal with the “war on terrorism” torture has begun to work its way towards being an accepted plan of action against terrorism targeting the United States. Terroristic acts perpetrate anger in individuals throughout the United States, so torture has migrated to being considered as a viable form of action through a blind eye. Suspect terrorists arguably have basic human rights and should not be put through such psychologically and physically damaging circumstances.

The Abu Ghraib torture scandal left a large blemish on the occupation of Iraq and George Bush’s War on terror. As stories of the torture happening in the Abu Ghraib prison began circulating, American citizens had trouble comprehending the acts of evil their soldiers had committed on Iraqis. Some began to see a correlation between Abu Ghraib and the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Though the guards in both situations were brutal to their captives, distinct differences lay in the severity of their actions. Abu Ghraib’s guards were much more vicious to their captives, and this can be attributed to the prejudices the guards felt against their captors, the environment, and the lack of training, compounded with a lack of accountability in the leadership.

Abu Ghraib Prison was a cruel and inhumane form of torture that occurred during the famous era of Saddam Hussein. Twenty miles west of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib stood as the most infamous prisons the world has ever seen. There was reported weekly executions, daily torture and barbarous living conditions. As many as fifty thousand men and women were crammed into Abu Ghraib at once. During the war against Iraq, The United States Army took over the prison and committed extenuous human rights violations against the prisoners. Detainees were raped, beaten, stripped, deprived of food and sleep, hung by their wrists and threatened with death all under American control. A famous picture taken at Abu Ghraib depicts an Iraqi standing on a box, in a scarecrow-like

The first part of They Say I Say focuses on how to properly introduce what others are saying and stresses the importance of providing context for one’s own argument. The authors explain how the context and purpose for the writing needs to be established, preferably early on, in order to interest readers to about an argument (20). By giving the readers background information, the readers will have a much easier time relating to the author’s argument. After demonstrating the need to provide the “they say” portion of an essay, the authors move on to how exactly one can introduce others’ arguments. The three main ways of introducing others’ ideas discussed throughout the first part of the book are paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting. For each of the three, the authors discuss pitfalls that writers should avoid and strategies that writers can use to improve. An example of a pitfall when summarizing is how many writers can accidentally create a “list summary”, which does not differentiate the information in the original work that is

The War on Terror has produced several different viewpoints on the utilization of torture and its effectiveness as a means to elicit information. A main argument has been supplied that torture is ineffective in its purpose to gather information from the victim. The usefulness of torture has been questioned because prisoners might use false information to elude their torturers, which has occurred in previous cases of torture. It has also been supposed that torture is necessary in order to use the information to save many lives. Torture has been compared to civil disobedience. In addition, the argument has been raised that torture is immoral and inhumane. Lastly, Some say that the acts are not even regarded as torture.

What are the main ideas or key concepts that the reader must understand in order to understand the author’s argument? (100-150

Consider the following situation: You are an army officer who has just captured an enemy soldier who knows where a secret time bomb has been planted. Unless defused, the bomb will explode, killing thousands of people. Would it be morally permissible to torture them to get him to reveal the bomb’s location? Discuss this problem in light of both Utilitarian and Kantian moral theories and present arguments from both moral perspectives for why torture is morally wrong.

Overall, the argument uses pathos to play on the human fear of torture and sway the reader with no real logical backing. She uses quotes and phrases like “[torture] endangers our soldiers on the battlefield” and “damage[s] our country’s image,” calling on the sense of patriotism throughout America to turn the people against torture. Applebaum even goes so far as to throw out the baseless conjecture “the use of ‘special methods’ might help explain why the war is going so badly (Applebaum 37).” This appeal to emotion tries to sway the reader against torture by making the assumption that there is some connection between the use of torture and the effectiveness of enemy soldiers – a great example of the use of pathos to mislead readers.