The Counterargument:
Despite international laws prohibiting torture and dozens of signatories to those laws, in actuality, torture is practiced worldwide, secretly and without accountability.
Amnesty International states that between 1997 and mid-2000, torture or ill treatment by state officials was reported in more than 150 countries out of the 195 investigated. In more than 70 countries it was commonly practiced. In more than 80 countries, people reportedly died as a result. Israel is the only country that has openly practiced torture in recent times. Given the widespread prevalence of torture, attorney Alan Dershowitz recommends that nations issue warrants for its exclusive use in ticking-bomb scenarios. He argues that legalization would make the act transparent and free from the hypocrisy of clandestine practice. He asserts that this transparency would help regulate something that otherwise occurs commonly, brutally, and irresponsibly throughout the world.
In some instances, torture has helped yield crucial information.
In 1995, Philippine intelligence agents tortured Abdul Hakim Murad, who was arrested after blowing up his apartment while making bombs. The agents employed tactics that included throwing chairs, breaking his ribs, forcing water into his mouth, and stubbing cigarettes on his genitals. Murad began finally to name his coconspirators. His confession detailed plans to assassinate John Paul II as well as plots to crash U.S. planes into the ocean and into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Later, his coconspirator Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Al Qaeda members were tortured in Jordan and Egypt, after which the CIA was able to uncover the millennium bomb plot of 1999. To not have administered torture in such cases would seem to have offered greater rights to a terrorist than to the innocent people under threat.
Determining when interrogation techniques become forms of torture can be difficult.
Interrogation is a legal and necessary practice in criminal justice systems. As the Israeli government indicates, however, "even a fair interrogation is likely to cause the suspect discomfort." Before simply dismissing torture, then, you must consider what limitations you would set on interrogation. Recent memos in the United States have attempted to revise the definition of torture to allow interrogators greater liberty to use a wide variety of methods not previously at their disposal. Section 2340 of the United States Code describes torture as "an act committed by a person under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control." But, a 2002 secret memo from the Justice Department recommended a more limited definition of torture (it has since been re-revised): "excruciating and agonizing pain" or pain that is "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." How far would you allow interrogators to push an interrogation?
Having considered both sides of the debate about torture, do you still believe that it should remain illegal even during crisis situations?>>
