Garrett+Miller

An Ongoing Review of Politics and Culture." //Why Is Torture Wrong?// Web. 29 Mar. 2012.  An editorial in the Vancouver Sun put it well: “Those subjected to physical torture usually conceive undying hatred for their torturer"Torture Risks Negative Consequences At Many Levels." //Opposing Views//. Web. 30 Mar. 2012. 
 * 1) Some people cant stomach the fact that a human could do that to another human
 * 2) torture is sometimes needed to get things out of people that they wouldn't normally say
 * 3) In most cases it isn't necessary because most terrorists are trained to withstand pain
 * 4) It is just a way for the government to blow off steam because most of the time they will not say anything
 * 5) only specially trained interrogators should be able to do it
 * 6) we can obtain info
 * 7) Torture is often used to punish
 * 8) to obtain information or a confession,
 * 9) to take revenge on a person or persons or create terror and fear within a population.
 * 10) Some of the most common methods of physical torture include beating, electric shocks, stretching, submersion, suffocation, burns, rape and sexual assault.
 * 11) Psychological forms of torture and ill-treatment, which very often have the most long-lasting consequences
 * 12) for victims commonly include: isolation, threats, humiliation, mock executions, mock amputations, and witnessing the torture of others.
 * 13) Ratification of the Convention obligates governments to assert responsibility for the prevention of torture and the redress for victims of torture.
 * 14) While the global fight requires the active support of all people the government of a given territory is ultimately responsible for any torture that occurs within its boundaries.
 * 15) Individual governments, therefore, must take it upon themselves to take part in the struggle against torture.
 * 16) Ratification of the Convention is often a necessary first step in this process.
 * 17) For this reason, the IRCT places a great emphasis on collective action aimed at the universal ratification of the Convention.
 * 18) Persons who reside in countries that have not ratified it have a very important role in lobbying within their own society.
 * 19) Persons who live in countries that have already ratified the Convention may also contribute to the cause through education and awareness raising activities promoting the cause of universal ratification of the Convention.
 * 20) Anyone can be a victim of torture - children as well as adults, young as well as old, religious as well as atheists, intellectuals and the uneducated alike.
 * 21) Nobody should be considered immune, although being a member of a particular political, religious, ethnic group or minority can very often set individuals aside as targets for government endorsed violence
 * 22) Frequent victims include politicians, union leaders, journalists, health professionals, human rights defenders, people in detention or prison, members of ethnic minorities, and student leaders.
 * 23) Victims of torture do not suffer alone. Victims' families and friends are also greatly affected.
 * 24) Local society is damaged both through the trauma inflicted on its members but also through an instilled awareness that basic human rights are neither guaranteed nor respected.
 * 25) Freedom is not respected.
 * 26) People are not respected.
 * 27) The use of torture sends a strong warning to those within a political, social, or religious opposition, but also to normal citizens who cannot rightly claim to live in a free or safe society.
 * 28) The consequences of torture reach far beyond immediate pain
 * 29) Many victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which includes symptoms such as flashbacks (or intrusive thoughts), severe anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, depression and memory lapses
 * 30) Torture victims often feel guilt and shame, triggered by the humiliation they have endured.
 * 31) Many feel that they have betrayed themselves or their friends and family.
 * 32) All such symptoms are normal human responses to abnormal and inhuman treatment.
 * 33) In some instances, whole societies can be more or less traumatised where torture has been used in a systematic and widespread manner.
 * 34) In general, after years of repression, conflict and war, regular support networks and structures have often been broken or destroyed.
 * 35) The IRCT works to fulfil the needs and rights of torture survivors whoever and wherever they are.
 * 36) IRCT"Rehabilitation." //What Is Torture? -//. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. .
 * 37) It can’t just be that it involves inflicting horrible pain and suffering.
 * 38) The moment before an enemy combatant surrenders, it is legal (under the current rules of war which govern U.S. military operations as I understand them), to shoot this person in head
 * 39) launch burning petroleum jelly onto him that is carefully designed to stick to his skin and clothing
 * 40) deviously hide explosives that will maim him (but intentionally not kill him) when he steps on a landmine, in order to slow the advance of the group that must then carry him, and also to make it easier to subsequently kill both him and the person who assists him.
 * 41) It can’t just be that the prisoner is helpless, or that the imbalance of power between the inflictor and recipient of the suffering is so high.
 * 42) The whole point of maneuver in warfare is often to put yourself in a position where you can cause massive causalities from a protected position.
 * 43) It is normally a retreating army that suffers the worst causalities.
 * 44) After all, it is legal (as I understand it) to drop a bomb from a virtually invulnerable aircraft at 30,000 feet onto an enemy combatant who has dropped his rifle and is running away at high speed. Presumably, it is actually illegal not to do this if so ordered by a superior officer.
 * 45) Why is it that if this person turns around looks up at the plane and says the words “I surrender” that it suddenly becomes wrong to punch him in the face hard enough to make him bleed? Not prudentially foolish, but morally wrong?
 * 46) It can’t just be that “hitting somebody hard in the face is really awful, seems mean, and is not something I would want done to me”,
 * 47) because everybody but a pure pacifist agrees that we have the right after he surrenders to lock him in a prison camp and deprive him of liberty for an indefinite period (basically, as I understand it, until hostilities have ended).
 * 48) Going to prison is unpleasant, and is not something I would want done to me.
 * 49) So apparently it’s OK to inflict (the most extreme imaginable) violence when the guy is totally helpless in combat, but suddenly upon his saying the words “I surrender”, any serious violence beyond confinement becomes wrong.
 * 50) Now, the natural justification for this is, I assume, that until he surrenders, if you let him run away, he might very well come back to try to kill you later.
 * 51) So once you have operationally captured him you are entitled to imprison him for the duration to prevent this future plausible attempt to kill you, but that is all.
 * 52) Why is that all? What changed when he said “I surrender?”. After all, he might escape from the prison camp. It might be your judgment that killing him, or intentionally injuring him short of death while he is imprisoned – as per landmines – might serve your purposes better.
 * 53) One could imagine all kinds of prudential reasons why one might make the judgment that war aims are better served by torturing such a captured combatant.
 * 54) What is the moral reason that you should not pursue such a course of action?
 * 55) You may be bound by an agreement that you (collectively, as a national unit) have made to treat prisoners in this way.
 * 56) But, either that treaty had a prudential motivation, or it was made, in part, because (at least some of) the signatories viewed torture of captured combatants as morally wrong.
 * 57) So, we’ve just kicked the can back one step: why did the national unit consider torture of captured combatants to be morally wrong?
 * 58) You may argue that torture, as a practical matter, is never confined to the intended cases, and leads to corruption. But this is a prudential argument – it doesn’t say that some specific acts of torture are immoral.
 * 59) You might argue that torture is so dehumanizing that it inevitably morally corrupts those who do it.
 * 60) But, how does this distinguish it from lots of other things done in war to other human beings
 * 61) Maybe I’m morally obtuse about this (again, I mean that non-rhetorically), but I don’t see how a non-pacifist makes the moral case against torturing captured combatants.
 * 62) Of course, there are at least two ways to interpret that.
 * 63) One is that torture of captured combatants is not morally wrong.
 * 64) The other is to see this as an example of why we should be skeptical about moral reasoning as a way to answer the question; that is, of why we must rely on moral intuition and the traditions of our society.
 * 1) besides some of the methods they have used throughout history are just disgusting
 * 2) waterboarding
 * 3) rat torture
 * 4) exsposure
 * 5) humiliation
 * 6) sentences for crimes
 * 7) prisoners
 * 8) Krauthammer's proposed rules are fairly restrictive.
 * 9) They are far from a wholesale endorsement of torture whenever it might prove useful.
 * 10) They acknowledge the humanity, even the human rights to some degree, of torture subjects.
 * 11) They aspire to no more torture than is necessary in any particular case.
 * 12) If these rules were enforced as punctiliously as their author lays them out, the U.S. Government might not find itself torturing a lot more people than it is torturing already, under various legal theories or none at all.
 * 13) And let's face it, we live with what's going on now.
 * 14) Most of us don't like it. But few of us are doing much to stop it.
 * 15) Those who know anything about moral theory know that the argument for torture is essentially a utilitarian one.
 * 16) Some are willing to torture because they believe it is the best means available to protect the 300 million people who live in this country.
 * 17) Hundreds/thousands of (foreign) detainees suffer as the price of protecting millions of us.
 * 18) Thus we achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
 * 19) Utilitarianism is a deeply flawed moral theory, as has been shown by many.
 * 20) In emphasizing intrinsic human dignity, and concerns about both personal and national character, I have implicitly rejected any purely utilitarian argument for (or against) torture. Indeed, because I believe that torture is intrinsically wrong, it poses a risk to the very argument I am making even to entertain utilitarian considerations.
 * 21) But because many policymakers and citizens at least implicitly operate from a utilitarian framework, it must be addressed here.
 * 22) The ultimate goal in gaining this information is to protect national security.
 * 23) However, there is good reason to wonder whether the use of torture more deeply motivates extant terrorists, and turns more people from concerned bystanders into hardened terrorists, than any intelligence benefit that might be gained.
 * 1) torture is something even the interrigator has to deal with the rest of his life
 * 2) the victim will never forget what happened to him
 * 3) the government does it while knowing they still wont talk either way
 * 4) The study of nearly 300 survivors of torture from the former Yugoslavia found that those who experienced no physical torment later developed equally high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as those who did.
 * 5) The survivors also rated the distress caused at the time by the two types of torture equally highly.
 * 6) Researchers say the findings provide a strong argument against the use of psychological maltreatment of prisoners - referred to by some as "torture lite".
 * 7) The UN convention against torture came into force in 1987, prohibiting acts that cause severe pain or suffering in order to gain information from prisoners.
 * 8) Nevertheless, torture still appears widespread around the world: a 2005 report by Amnesty International found that systematic torture occurred in 104 out of 150 countries surveyed.
 * 9) Since the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, the nation received severe criticism for torturing suspected terrorists abroad, such as in the Abu Ghraib prison and at the Guantanamo Bay naval station.
 * 10) Officials claimed that the psychological torture used against detainees there - such as sleep deprivation - were legal as these did not cause direct physical harm.
 * 11) To investigate the impact of purely psychological torture, Metin Basoglu of King's College London, UK, and colleagues surveyed 279 survivors of torture from the former Yugoslavia, including both soldiers and civilians from the previously war-torn region.
 * 12) Between 2000 and 2002 the survivors answered questions about the nature of the torture they endured.
 * 13) The majority of them had endured beating and other forms of physical torture, including electric shocks, tooth extractions and suffocation.
 * 14) But about 20 of the survivors experienced purely psychological manipulations, such as sham executions or the torturing of family members and threats of rape.
 * 15) Basoglu says the findings challenge the common perception that psychological torture is less distressing than physical torture.
 * 16) "Implicit in this distinction is a difference in the distressing nature of the events.
 * 17) The evidence takes issue with that," he says. "And since psychological torture is as bad as physical torture, we shouldn't use it."
 * 18) The findings chime with previous work, say others. "The conclusions are completely consistent with what those subjected to these draconian practices have reported," Rubenstein says.
 * 19) He points out that US Senator John McCain, who experienced torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has said that if he were forced to make a decision between enduring psychological or physical torture, he would not hesitate to pick the latter.
 * 20) "Torture generates extremely bad intelligence data" and is "enormously counterproductive", according to bioethicist Steven Miles at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, US. "Psychological Torture 'as Bad as Physical Torture'" //- Science-in-society//. Web. 30 Mar. 2012. 
 * 21) Experts say torture victims can develop post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and symptoms such as social withdrawal, confusion and sleep problems.
 * 22) the emotional scars of torture wont always be cleansed
 * 23) Many victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which includes symptoms such as flashbacks (or intrusive thoughts), severe anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, depression and memory lapses
 * 24) Torture victims often feel guilt and shame, triggered by the humiliation they have endured.
 * 25) Many feel that they have betrayed themselves or their friends and family.
 * 26) All such symptoms are normal human responses to abnormal and inhuman treatment.
 * 27) In some instances, whole societies can be more or less traumatised where torture has been used in a systematic and widespread manner.
 * 28) In general, after years of repression, conflict and war, regular support networks and structures have often been broken or destroyed.
 * 29) The IRCT works to fulfil the needs and rights of torture survivors whoever and wherever they are.
 * 30) IRCT"Rehabilitation." //What Is Torture? -//. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <[]>.
 * 31) It can’t just be that it involves inflicting horrible pain and suffering.
 * 32) The moment before an enemy combatant surrenders, it is legal (under the current rules of war which govern U.S. military operations as I understand them), to shoot this person in head
 * 33) launch burning petroleum jelly onto him that is carefully designed to stick to his skin and clothing
 * 34) deviously hide explosives that will maim him (but intentionally not kill him) when he steps on a landmine, in order to slow the advance of the group that must then carry him, and also to make it easier to subsequently kill both him and the person who assists him.
 * 35) It can’t just be that the prisoner is helpless, or that the imbalance of power between the inflictor and recipient of the suffering is so high.
 * 36) The whole point of maneuver in warfare is often to put yourself in a position where you can cause massive causalities from a protected position.
 * 37) It is normally a retreating army that suffers the worst causalities.
 * 38) After all, it is legal (as I understand it) to drop a bomb from a virtually invulnerable aircraft at 30,000 feet onto an enemy combatant who has dropped his rifle and is running away at high speed. Presumably, it is actually illegal not to do this if so ordered by a superior officer.
 * 39) Why is it that if this person turns around looks up at the plane and says the words “I surrender” that it suddenly becomes wrong to punch him in the face hard enough to make him bleed? Not prudentially foolish, but morally wrong?
 * 40) It can’t just be that “hitting somebody hard in the face is really awful, seems mean, and is not something I would want done to me”,
 * 41) because everybody but a pure pacifist agrees that we have the right after he surrenders to lock him in a prison camp and deprive him of liberty for an indefinite period (basically, as I understand it, until hostilities have ended).
 * 42) Going to prison is unpleasant, and is not something I would want done to me.
 * 43) So apparently it’s OK to inflict (the most extreme imaginable) violence when the guy is totally helpless in combat, but suddenly upon his saying the words “I surrender”, any serious violence beyond confinement becomes wrong.
 * 44) Now, the natural justification for this is, I assume, that until he surrenders, if you let him run away, he might very well come back to try to kill you later.
 * 45) So once you have operationally captured him you are entitled to imprison him for the duration to prevent this future plausible attempt to kill you, but that is all.
 * 46) Why is that all? What changed when he said “I surrender?”. After all, he might escape from the prison camp. It might be your judgment that killing him, or intentionally injuring him short of death while he is imprisoned – as per landmines – might serve your purposes better.
 * 1) So once you have operationally captured him you are entitled to imprison him for the duration to prevent this future plausible attempt to kill you, but that is all.
 * 2) Why is that all? What changed when he said “I surrender?”. After all, he might escape from the prison camp. It might be your judgment that killing him, or intentionally injuring him short of death while he is imprisoned – as per landmines – might serve your purposes better.