Torture can take many different forms in the sense of what it can do to and on people, it can be phycological, or physical and in today’s mindset of people it is a very controversial topic.
This was brought to light and recently became a topic of debate when President Trump appointed his new director of the C.I.A to a woman named Gina Haspel (Goldman). About a year after the attack of September 11th she was tasked with going to a prison to try and hunt down leads on potential terrorists, “Shortly after, agency contractors in the frantic hunt for the conspirators waterboarded a Qaeda suspect three times and subjected him to brutal interrogation techniques” (Goldman).
This quickly defined her career and after many of these classified missions became public, she was seen in a bad light up until President Trump appointed her as the director of the C.I.A. This is what the basis of what this issue is and why it has come about recently although it has always been an issue of human rights or whether it is morally right or wrong. With that in mind the main issue concerning people and what is being debated now is if the military should be allowed to use enhanced interrogation techniques such as water-boarding to potential terrorists?
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The basis of the issue arose from the new director doing this in the past and it has been debated whether it is okay for the military to do this to certain types of people and not all, it is not an issue if this should be allowed in the united states for all things like in prison or if a law was passed so that the government could do it wherever they see fit it is just an issue about if the military should be allowed to use these methods to try and protect the country by trying to gain information from these interrogation techniques.
When people generally think of the word torture, they tend to associate it with very negative things and harming another human being. Torture has been around since the earliest of times and has taken many different forms throughout the ages. According to Britannica there are countless different kinds of torture but some of the oldest that they list include things as hanging, and falling, specifically for example like pushing someone off of a cliff usually to their death (Britannica). Over the years these methods have gotten much more cruel and inhuman such as rat torture where it is placed in a container on a person and one side is heated up so the rat digs into your body, waterboarding, using knifes weapons, power tools the list goes on and on about the disturbing ways that people come up with to harm another person.
Those examples help show the state of the issue today because it is a question of human rights. Almost all people can agree that it is not morally or humanly right to harm another person in these extreme ways but in the case of this issue it is not doing it to all people it is to the people that are potential threats to our national security and this is why there is a controversy around it because it is a crime against human rights but if it can protect the lives of hundreds maybe millions of people should the military be allowed under law to perform these enhanced interrogation techniques. The people that argue against letting this be something that the military can do is basically as stated above that it is inhumane and should not be allowed anywhere in the world.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in most places around the world. For example, the United States has laws in place where it hardly ever happens if people are tortured like any of the scenarios anywhere in the country that we know about. There could be places where this does happen, but we have law enforcement and other things of that nature to prevent it from being a widespread issue. In other parts of the world this is just not the case especially if it is a person or soldier from the united states they are brutally abused and tortured as you can find videos online of Isis and other terrorist organizations making videos of them cutting off Americans heads. Not only that if they are not killed immediately, they are tortured until eventual death and not having any repercussions for this. This is the other side to this argument because if these terrible people do this to Americans it raises the question of why can the United States do nothing to these people when they brutally kill our own citizens and soldiers?
To try and bring this situation and issue down a little and try and get people to see that what the CIA has done is in his words not necessarily torture is how they will use the technique of water boarding. Tim Kennedy is a special forces army ranger and a UFC fighter and recently he voluntarily had his friends water board him to show people how in the sense of forms of torture this is not (Kennedy Rogan). In an interview with Joe Rogan he explains that he did it to show people that this form of “torture” is not actually torture because it does not do any physical damage to a person (Kennedy).
For people that don’t know what water boarding is, it simulates the sensation of drowning by putting a towel or something like It over the face of a person and pour water on their face and it simulates what you would feel if you were drowning. The next points he made were that he has spent time overseas and has seen these people torture Americans, children women, and any one that they see fit, he went as far to say that he has seen someone pour acid onto a woman (Kennedy). The reason that he states all this because in his words these people are animals and compared to what they do to us, what we do to then is nothing (Kennedy). This has also brought controversy to the issue because he knew that he was going to make it out alive and could stop at any point if he wanted to but in the case of the CIA those people have no idea if they are going to make it out alive.
In an opposing view to Kennedy there have been many studies on whether or not torture is effective, in other words to enhanced interrogation methods even work to gain useful if any information out of these suspected terrorists. In an article from Journalists Resource they try to answer the question if torture is effective or not and their specific points is the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA. In their findings they came back that torture in fact doesn’t work and the reasoning is because under certain circumstances people will do and say whatever they can to make the pain stop (Journalists Resource).
This issue is something that has strong arguments on each side for doing these things to protect our national security or giving the terrorists what they deserve for what they do. On the other side it is a matter of what is morally right and wrong and the human rights that every individual should have. This issue has many different convincing points for each side of it and it is hard to see where people stand as it is so split for both ways and this is why it is such a big issue in the country right now and blew up when the President appointed a new CIA director that has used the practices before. So, the question is, Should the military be allowed to use enhanced interrogation techniques such as torture on potential terrorists?
Annotated Bibliography
- Eldridge, Alison “Cruel and Unusual punishment: 15 types of torture” Britannica https://www.britannica.com/list/cruel-and-unusual-punishments-15-types-of-torture This article provides a list of different kinds of torture that have been used at one point in time. This will help my research because it can argue both sides about if the military should be allowed to do it.
- Kennedy, Tim “Joe Rogan – Tim Kennedy says waterboarding isn’t torture” YouTube. 17, May 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?viTtjtGf-8wQ This is a podcast from Joe Rogan who has had a broad spectrum of people on his show to talk about many different things. On this podcast he is speaking with Tim Kennedy, who is a United States Special Forces soldier and he has taken the liberty of waterboarding himself to try and prove to people that it is not torture. This helps my research because it is arguing towards one side and it is one side of the argument that I can explore further with research.
- Goldman, Adam. “Gina Haspel, Trump’s Choice for C.I.A., Played Role in Torture Program”, The new York Times 13, March, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/politics/gina-haspel-cia-director-nominee-trump-torture-waterboarding.html This is an article stating how Haspel is the newly appointed director of the C.I.A. that the President has appointed and the controversy with it because she had tortured individuals after the attacks on September 11th, this started the issue of whether it should be okay for the military to use enhanced interrogation techniques or not. This will help my research greatly because this is where the social issue of torture was brought to light.
- Farmer J. John Jr. “Trump and the Law on Torture” lawfareblog.org 1, March 2018 https://www.lawfareblog.com/trump-and-law-torture This article talks about in what ways that Trump views torture and how he is for it as he has been quoted saying many times that he believes that terrorists should be tortured for the sole fact that they are terrorist and deserve it. This takes another side in my research by showing further how the issue was brought about to be discussed.
- Journalists resource “Does torture work? The research says, “no”’ journalists resource 26, January 2017 https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/security-military/does-torture-work-research-says-no/ This is outlining evidence that they have compiled to show that methods of torture are not effective and under certain conditions a person will say or do whatever to make the pain and suffering stop. In my research and paper this is useful because it provides evidence that maybe torture has no reason to be used if it is not effective in any useful way other than to harm a human being.
- Johnson Sam “I Spent Seven years as a Vietnam POW” Politico.com 21, July 2015 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/i-was-vietnam-pow-donald-trump-120436 This article outlines how a prisoner of war was treated in Vietnam and the things that happened to them during this time. This helps build my paper because it shows how other countries treat Americans when they are captured, and it can be compared to how we treat the POWs that America has and see the differences in harm done to them.
- Loveday Morris “War with Isis” independent.co.uk 9 November 2015 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-with-isis-freed-prisoner-speaks-of-regular-torture-and-us-raid-that-saved-him-a6726891.html The story of how freed prisoners were regularly tortured and how they were saved by a U.S. raid to get them to safety. This will also help show multiple sides of the issue and where it stands about how if the US should be able to torture terrorists because of what they do to people and compare the two different ways people are treated in different countries under the same circumstances.
- Arsenault Grimm Elizabeth, “With Gina Haspel at CIA, could Trump revive the torture program?” the Washington post 8 May 2018 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/05/09/under-gina-haspel-could-trump-revive-the-torture-program/?utm_term.3aa340a97a44 An article explaining where the torture program came from and why it even exists in the first place and explaining why Trump is for it. This further backs up the other sources about why this has become a social issue in the United States today.
