Questions:
1. Is waterboarding torture?
22. Should
waterboarding be an allowable means of extracting information?
33. If
waterboarding is acceptable, what else may be?
I
personally do not believe that waterboarding in any way, shape, or form, should
be considered an allowable practice. It is easy to watch something on
television or read about it in a newspaper and have a glazed over view of it’s
reality. We, as a community, truly are desensitized. I think that the fact that
Christopher Hitchens actually subjected himself to the waterboarding process
makes his argument significantly stronger than any debate based on principals
alone. It was hard to read about the physical effects that waterboarding had on
him and dumbfounding to believe that it all can happen in less than two
minutes.
I
would argue that the inhumanity of inflicting such strong emotional distress on
another human being is inherently wrong and call it day, though I realize that
is not the strongest of arguments. Hitchens summarized the opinion of those who
took him through the process by saying “…a man who has been waterboarded may
well emerge from the experience a bit shaky, but he is in a mood to surrender
the relevant information and is unmarked and undamaged and indeed ready for
another bout in a short time.” But, is undamaged really a fair description?
Hitchens later recalls that he still has nightmares about his experience, that
being short of breath triggers vivid flashbacks. That sounds damaged to me.
Emotions
put aside however waterboarding still seems an unreasonable technique. Hitchens
references Malcolm Nance’s argument that waterboarding is “…a means of extracting
junk information.” This alone is cause for alarm and questioning. Why should we
employ a policy that would grant us the authority to obtain faulty information?
Hitchens questions his own mental state while being waterboarded and whether or
not he would give false information to end the experience. Any rational human
being enduring that amount of stress would have the natural drive to end it. There
is no reason that we as a country should invest time and money into
investigating information earned through such methods.
I agree with you that waterboarding is torture and it is morally reprehensible. However I take issue with a lot of the reasons that Hitchens uses to justify the end of torture. I take the most issue with the reason that he cites from Mr. Nance saying they get "junk information". Hitchens cites a man confessing he is a homosexual while interrogated. I think that is a gross misrepresentation of the evidence that we extract from prisoners. While some of it may be false, I would imagine it would only be a small amount. I do not think we could have killed Osama Bin Laden without extracting intelligence. We do not know if any of this intelligence has helped to thwart other attacks. I felt Hitchens did not provide strong enough reasons to sway me in his favor.
ReplyDeleteI too believe that waterboarding should not be allowed because it seems inhumane to treat fellow human beings to cruelly. To give others a sense that they are going to die is unnerves me. Though indeed this practice gets information from the person, the person may be spouting out nonsense just to stop the torture being inflicted on them. Even though waterboarding does no visible physical damage, the person does not know when they will get the sensation of drowning. At least with the other ways of torture you know when you will feel pain and prepare yourself. In the end, I believe they should stop waterboarding and find a better way to obtain the necessary information from people in a humane way.
ReplyDeleteI agree that water boarding is torture, but I do not think it should be outlawed. I think it is a very effective way of getting information. I do not think when they are obtaining the information they need, it is during the torturing process because like you said they give false information. It is well after the torturing they get the information they need while that person being tortured is in the right state of mind. And another reason they should not out law it is because our soldiers get the same thing when they are tortured. War is not humane, so it would be hard to obtain information for a war in a humane way.
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