Torture Right Or Wrong?

There is a fine line between taking the enemy captive as part of war and torturing them. I believe that during war it is inevitable that people are going to be held captive as part of war, but there is some sort of humanity that needs to be upheld at the end of the day. There are many international treaties such as the Geneva Convention that many nations are a part of. The idea behind the convention is to make sure that all of the nations are on board with one another on how they are going to treat people. The problem is that most other nations besides the United States have a different mindset of how they operate and how they believe people should be treated in situations of war or high profile people. Most people would like to live in the United States because of all of the rights everyone has here in the country.

While the law itself condemns use of torture for any purpose, torture becomes necessary to be used in particular critical instances. According to Miles, the United States senate allowed the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on a number of cases and detainees. The human rights should be considered first in any event whether in interrogation or any other course of action1. The policy makers have found themselves between hard and difficult decisions to make on the techniques for obtaining vital information from terrorists who are trained heavily on resisting from giving information when caught in the wrong side of the law.

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.

On December 9, 2014, a 528 page document was released to the public known as the “CIA Torture Report”. It contains details of the CIA’s (Central Intelligence Agency) “enhanced” interrogation. The document, which is actually a summary of the 6,700 page report states that the United States, has been torturing its detainees in foreign countries in order to get confessions or answers from them. The many tactics used by the CIA include but not limited to, facial and abdominal slaps, rectal “feeding” and/or rehydration, ice-water baths, sleep deprivation for more than a week, shackling in stress positions, isolation, sensory deprivation, water-boarding, and walling (being slammed against a wall repeatedly). Detainees were also told that their families would be harmed, and/or sexually assaulted. Many Americans are against this “enhanced” interrogation, others feel it is necessary.

The torture of captured suspects is contrarian to the values of the American legal system because generally captured suspects are supposed to entitled to due process, according to Amendment V of the United States Constitution: “no person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Guantanamo Bay”. Terrorist which are held captive by the American government are presumed guilty but are not being given a fair chance to seek representation in a court of law or have fall range access to their attorneys once they find themselves in a conflict. In my opinion, terrorists should have the opportunity to have their cases reviewed and be given a fighting chance instead of being held for an indefinite amount of time without due process or trial. The U.S

On the other hand, the Democratic majority of the SSCI claims the CIA’s torture program was ineffective and riddled with misconduct. Among their many arguments is their assertion that the program was mismanaged and that it failed to administer proper oversight. Those found responsible of violating “CIA policies or performed poorly were rarely held accountable or removed from positions of responsibility (The Senate Committee, 2014, p. 23).” One such case took place on November 20th, 2002. Gul Rahman, a suspected afghan militant, was chained up, naked from the waist down, and left in an unheated cell overnight (Silverstein, K. 2014). When CIA officers checked on him the next morning he was dead due to hypothermia. The man responsible for this negligence was the junior officer, Matthew Zirbel. Matthew Zirbel was the commanding officer at the CIA blacksite, the Salt Pit where this brutal act took place. Even though he was on his first foreign tour and colleagues had warned of his “lack of judgement, honesty and maturity (The Senate Committee, 2014, p. 50)”, Zirbel held a position of great power. This fault had been identified by the C.I.A but the executive director, Kyle Foggo, decided that no disciplinary action was merited. Furthermore, the CIA never informed Rahman’s family of his death and were holding Rahman without him meeting the standard for detention.

There is evidence that supports that as many as 54 countries have taken part in America’s CIA torture program. Poland allowed the CIA to build a secret prison in their territory. Australia was involved with an incident of two citizens by the names of Mamdouh Habib. Australian officials interrogated Habib after they captures him in Pakistan in 2001. Habib was then transferred to Egypt where he was tortured. Egypt is known to have limited human rights law, which makes it easier to torture people. Shortly after he was sent off to Guantanamo Bay, he then was sent back to Australia without any charges against him in 2005. Habib attempted to sue the Australian government, but the case was dropped when Habib was paid an undisclosed amount of money to drop the case.

The use of torture as a strategy of war is as old as war itself. Torture serves a number of different functions. One of those functions is punishment for crimes committed, and torture is still used in this way to some degree. Another one of the functions of torture is to extract information or confessions. It is this type of torture that Alan Dershowitz and Ken Roth claim was, and still is, being used in the war against terrorism. Although torture violates the principles of the Geneva Convention, it is still used: "countries all over the world violate the Geneva Accords. They do it secretly," (Dershowitz, cited in "Dershowitz: Torture could be justified"). The use of torture can be " as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice," (Dershowitz, cited in "Dershowitz: Torture could be justified"). This stance echoes the official stance of the United States after September 11, when the White House claimed that torture may be "justified" (Priest and Smith). The argument is simple: if torturing one person leads to information that saes hundreds or thousands of lives, then it is worth it. "We won't know if he is a ticking-bomb terrorist unless he provides us information, and he's not likely to provide information unless we use certain extreme measures," (Dershowitz, cited in "Dershowitz: Torture could be justified").

“The treatment from the Americans was like being mugged by a trusted friend. It is scary when you are tortured by someone who does not believe in torturing” (Apuzzo). These words were said by Ahmed Errachidi. He was sent to Gitmo in 2001 after being accused of training at an Al Qaeda training camp. Later, it was proved that he was never there. Errachidi had bipolar disorder before he went to Gitmo. After being held in isolation he had a psychotic breakdown. He was put in stress positions and was sleep deprived. Still to this day, he has flashbacks to his torture. “All I can think of is when they will take me back.” After 9/11 the US never wanted any serious terrorist attacks to happen again. This caused EIT to become popular by the CIA.

Deciding Who to Torture Ideally, the decision to interrogate is based on solid evidence linking a suspect to terrorist activities or indicating that a suspect is in possession of formation. However, too often, the decision to interrogate is based on whether a suspect seems to fit a “terrorist profile,” behavior that is perceived as suspicious, or association with known or suspected terrorists. In 2002, MaherArar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian birth, was seized by U.S. officials at Kennedy International Airport. He was subjected to intense interrogation over the course of several days, and then flown to Syria for in-depth interrogation. He was held in a small, dimly lit prison cell and repeatedly beaten over the course of 10 months. To stop

In a world where we allow torture as a tactic to extract information from supposed terrorists, we could potentially save lives of thousands of people. In a hypothetical situation where there is a terrorist group who have planted a bomb in a densely populated area and we capture one of the members of the group, do we not have an obligation to get the information in any means necessary? Should we not torture one terroristic individual to save the thousands of lives of innocent American civilians? Some people would argue that we shouldn’t for many reasons, including that torture doesn’t always produce information, let alone correct information. They may argue that innocent people could be tortured, and that we wouldn’t know if

Imagine there is a bomb under downtown New York City. You have captured the terrorist who planted it there and you have the ability to torture him and find out where the bomb is planted. Otherwise, there will be countless victims. So, is torture ethical? Torture is a topic that is largely debated among many countries and is one of the leading debates today. Torture is a problem because it is considered a violation of human rights and a crime against humanity. With terrorists on the loose everywhere what are we going to do? The debate on torture really began after the signing of the Geneva conventions in 1949 after there were discussions on the treatment of soldiers in other countries. The real issue now is that many terrorist organizations in the middle east that do not abide by the Geneva Conventions

Torture has been around for a very long time. Military leader Napoleon wrote an anti-torture letter in 1798 saying, "The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know." The interrogation methods are a problem for many reasons. One, the methods waste time. Secondly, there are other ways to get information besides torture. If the CIA is clever, they could acquire more information, and faster. A student of Australia’s Charles Sturt University conducted a study on what methods work in the CIA. She interviewed thirty-four interrogators and found that disclosure was fourteen times as likely in a situation that was of physical comfort, and it was

"All other methods have failed the person you are holding has information of a pending attack on America! You can prevent it only by getting the information your prisoner refuses to reveal torture (advanced interrogation technique) might force him to talk, thereby saving countless lives or offering a suspect something, he wants – whether a cigarette in the beginning or a reduced sentence later – builds rapport. Once the interrogator establishes a bond with the suspect, things become easier. The argument here, is torture right or wrong? This is the dilemma you face” day in and day out when it comes to torturing someone. Who is more important the lawless or the innocent? In today’s society, many people feel that torture is necessary. Over the last decade, torture was necessary however; there still seems to be a divide between it and those who oppose torture in any form under any circumstance because it is inhumane and the information gathered is unreliable.

The failures of enhanced interrogation outweigh the successes of it heavily. Considering this fact, CIA members water boarded Khalid Sheikh