Torture

There has been a lot in the news lately about torture. It appears that everyone has split themselves into one of two groups.

1. Torture in ANY form is NEVER acceptable.
2. It is acceptable to water board terrorists.

While most people will just go with their gut reaction on this. I like to think things through. There are two major things to deliberate over here.

1. What is torture?
2. Is torture effective?

If water boarding is torture and it is not effective the easy answer is "don't do it"
If water boarding is not torture and is effect the easy answer is "do it"
If water boarding is not torture and is not effective. "probably shouldn't do it"
If water boarding is torture and is effective "we have a conundrum."

1. People have been saying that water boarding is not torture. I have never experienced it so I am not able to make a personal judgment. When we think about torture the more graphic methods come to mind, someone being cut or physically damaged. I always think of the James Bond movie where they cut out the seat and hit his testicles with a rope. Water boarding is not as physical, per se, so the confusion is understandable. My first inclination was that it is torture. The reason for this is you are doing it, because you trying to extract information. It must be very unpleasant if you believe it will "crack" or "break" someone who is very set in their beliefs. Not willing to go on pure speculation I looked around and researched past occurrences, and water boarding has happened a lot more than I thought. In World War II Japanese soldiers water boarded American soldiers. They were convicted of torture. In the Vietnam War soldiers water boarded North Vietnamese soldiers. They were court-martialed. It seems that all precedence points to water boarding being torture.

2. Is torture effective? This is going to be debated a lot over the next little bit. This question makes me think of Jack Bauer yelling, "Where's the bomb!!??" When is it morally okay to torture? Is it ok to save 1,000,000 lives? 1,000? 10? 1? This, however, IS NOT THE ISSUE. Remember we need to know if it is effective before we BEGIN to be concerned by this. Most evidence points towards torture not being effective. People will lie or give false information to make the pain go away. The question "Should we torture to save X lives?" is irrelevant until we have definitive proof that torture is effective.

So currently I am sitting on some viewpoints.

1. Water boarding is torture. I believe that it causes sufficient mental duress to be defined as torture, and in the past, the United States has agreed with me.

2. Torture is not the most effective questioning method. Torture is not guaranteed to provide useful information, and I believe that if everyone knows that America tortures, it will cause more harm than good. I believe that torturing someone to prevent a nuclear attack is more the subject of Fiction than Non.