Essay On Banning Torture

The government has been known to secretly kidnap people and kill or torture them. “In the years since 9/11, our government has illegally kidnapped, detained and tortured numerous prisoners” (ACLU). This shows how much power the government actually has. They have the ability to kidnap citizens and go undetected and under the radar. The government says that they are able to kidnap anybody if they believe that they could be a threat to the United States’ safety. This needless kidnapping goes against the constitution of the United States of America. There have been many times that the government has been caught torturing prisoners of war and possible terrorists. For example when George W. Bush was president there were multiple cases where the government was found out to have been torturing people. “Bush stood, the U.S. military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture." It is here in Panama, and later at the school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found” (Klein). Though it is illegal to torture prisoners on American soil, the American Military is notorious for doing it anyway. There is evidence of this happening on multiple occasions in multiple different places. Although, torture is illegal

The United States is considered one of the most powerful countries in the world. They have a well organized and trained armed forces. But, they were built with principles and moral standards. According to those rules, people could not do what they pleased all the time. The paper signed by the founding Fathers is, the Constitution of the United States, which prohibits the enforcers of the law to torture. Yet, it is still done. There is no straight statement that prohibits torture. An arguement of whether it can be legal or not is made, for the use of, retriving important information, the use of the 8th amendment and how 9/ 11 change some perspectives.

In August of 2002, without consulting Congress, the Bush administration changed the definition of torture by military standards to allow for previously illegal interrogation techniques. (Inside Guantanamo) Bush lost a lot of respect from American citizens for doing this on his own instead of consulting Congress because it added a lot of suspicion that he was trying to hide something. The Pentagon organized the interrogation techniques into three categories. The first one included yelling and deception techniques and the second included sensory deprivation, isolation, stress positions, extensive interrogation, hooding, clothing removal, and the use of phobias. The third and most severe category included waterboarding and even death threats. (Greenberg 221) Bush wanted justice to be served to the men who planned and carried out the deaths of thousands of innocent Americans in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He thought the families of the thousands killed that day deserved that justice. Soon after, President Bush sent 14 men to Guantanamo Bay so that justice could be served to them by the military commissions he had proposed. They were to be put under the custody of the CIA where they would get what Bush thought they deserved and thanks to the Bybee Memo, Bush had complete, unlimited power when it came to core war matters such as this. While constitutional, the actions of the Bush administration as he went behind Congress’s back and came up with a new definition for torture

Accordingly, Americans on the previous Bush administration are apprehensive about that lack of enhanced interrogation in the US and the safety of the American people. In Israel there is a prison called the administrative detention, which is detention without trial. This allows undetected interrogations to occur under the newly elected prime minister. Meaning that there were loopholes found to go around laws that were put in place.

When someone wants a law they take it to the judge to debate on it. Our country has been suffering from torture for so long. Someone decided to take it to the judge.After a great debate, the judicial branch sent their information to the legislative branch who concluded that they as well wanted it as a bill. President George W. Bush established that he didn't like this idea so he vetoed the bill. Bush states "The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," In the article, Bush Vetoes Bill Banning Torture, it states “President George W. Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because

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.

For years after the terrible acts of 9/11 the United States Government used many different tactics to acquire information about Osama bin Laden and the terrorist group known as Al Qaeda, who was involved with them, and what they were planning next. The way the government, the CIA specifically, tried and succeeded in torturing its detainees was astounding and sometimes stomach churning as shown in the movie, Zero Dark Thirty, and it’s no wonder that President Obama reformed the laws and regulations that President George W. Bush installed and allowed the CIA to do. The second item about torture for military use was the reliability of the techniques and how often and how much information was actually acquired from

“The one lesson we 've learned from history is that we have not learned any of history 's lessons” (Unknown Author, n.d.). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) such as “waterboarding” and extraordinary rendition (aka “black sites”) by CIA agents for American intelligence interests and to analyze the drastically apposing views of the legalities, morality, and effectiveness of these methods. Is the CIA’s use of EITs and extraordinary rendition equivalent to torture, and therefore, acts in violation of international law? The definition of “torture” under statute 18 U.S.C. 2340 states, “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control” (United States Code, 2011). This definition expands with specific identifying characteristics of an act and varies to include humiliation of an individual. Of course, pain and suffering is a subjective experience. The worlds historical practice of “torture” reinforces lessons that human’s imaginative capacity for inflicting pain and terror on our fellow human is disgracefully boundless; yet, parallel behaviors of violence and humiliation reemerge with disturbing regularity (Smith, 2013).

Regarding the moral ambiguity of torture and the War on Terror, former President Barack Obama once said: “Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction” (qtd. in Piwowarczyk). Torture is a form of punishment the U.S. government and many governments use around the world. It is an effective tool to get information quickly, but under the Obama administration, the United States stopped all use of torture. While many governments still support the use of torture. The United States, however, went in a different direction taking torture out of all military personnel. Seeing how information can be extracted in a more civilized and humane way. Also, that any information given to the interrogators may be false or inaccurate, and that it is against international law, and that it puts any United States soldiers abroad in danger. Many citizens of the United States supported the policy, and many did not like the policy. The United States has used torture in the past to find the location of many terrorists that have threatened our homeland, and many of those instances lead to more American lives saved. Although torture has saved countless American lives, many of the strategies and forms of torture are unethical and inhumane to use on people of this world.

The United States citizens have been wrestling with the question of, whether their government intelligence agencies should be prohibited from using torture to gather information. According to Michael Ignatieff, this is the hardest case of what he describes as ‘lesser evil ethics’—a political ethics predicated on the idea that in emergencies leaders must choose between different evils Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, torture was viewed by most American’s as only actions that brutal dictators would employ on their citizens, to keep order within their country. However, this all changed when in May 2004, The New Yorker released photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The disturbing pictures were released on the internet showing bodies of naked Iraqis piled onto each other, others showed Iraqis being tortured and humiliated. There was a huge up roar, which caused the President at the time George W. Bush to publicly apologize, and threaten the job of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Soon after, the CIA Conformed the use of waterboarding on three Al-Qaida suspects in 2002 and 2003, which further annihilated the topic. Since these reports, torture has been in the forefront of national politics, and the public opinion has been struggling to commit on whether torture is right or wrong.

“Torture and abusive interrogation tactics are illegal under both U.S. law and international law. Torture is prohibited under federal law, as are lesser forms of detainee abuse such as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” (Human Rights First)

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

Memos from the Department of Defense called for the implementation of enhanced interrogation techniques to begin immediately and to be sure “these are carried out”, these were in accordance with the White House. All of President Bush’s closest cabinet members and national security advisers signed off on enhanced interrogation, believing that under the legal research conducted the techniques satisfied the legal standard as not being torture, (Bartz, 2006)

“Torture is ineffective as a means of extracting reliable information, and likely leads to faulty intelligence. Torture has long-term negative consequences for the mental health of both survivors and perpetrators of torture. The use of torture has far-reaching consequences for American citizens: it damages the reputation of the United States, creates hostility towards our troops, provides a pretext for cruelty against U.S. soldiers and citizens, places the U.S. in the company of some of the most oppressive regimes in the world, and undermines the credibility of the United States when it argues for international human rights.” (SPSSI) Consequently, President Obama influenced The War on Terror when he banned all use of torture as soon as he came to power in 2009.

The U.S. government’s misguided embrace of torture, secret prisons, and renditions to torture over the past seven years have undermined its counterterrorism efforts, provided enemies with an easy recruiting tool, and diminished the United States’ reputation as a world leader in advancing and upholding human rights. Restoring our nation’s commitment to humane treatment must be a top priority for the next president. This is not a partisan issue; during the 2008 presidential campaign, both President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain acknowledged the damage to the reputation of the United States that has been caused by this policy of torture and official cruelty, and each has vowed as president to uphold existing bans on torture the Bush