The US should allow the limited use of torture

== My Case ==Note: Hayd says I changed the time-limit for a ticking time bomb scenario, but he's wrong that the time limit was 24 hours. In the hypothetical, the time limit was 24 hours, but it could be up to a few weeks in a real scenario. The hypothetical scenario doesn't limit the real world scenario in any way. Hayd concedes that there have been examples where torture worked in preventing a ticking time bomb scenario. This concession dooms his case. Hayd's sole convincing response to this is that 69% of the time, people are lead on "wild goose chases" as a result which deviates concentration from the problem. But I'm only advocating torture in cases of "necessity. " I concede that it isn't always necessary in ticking time bomb scenarios, but it often is. Infliction of torture via waterboarding or harsher methods don't take time, because all it needs is the right tools. Waterboarding takes a few minutes to gain information, and the set-up takes a couple of hours. Rapport building takes weeks, even months. That's why Mathew Alexander, an anti-torture advocate, concedes that torture is required in some cases with extreme time restraints (Rd. 1, source 4). So there's no other means to apply "concentration," so even if it doesn't work 69% of the time, there's no harm from trying. Hayd says torture doesn't work 69% of the time. But in the cases where the students were made to sign a false confession, there was no duress placed on them. Terrorists feel pain and need to avoid that infliction. When Abu Zubayda realized that torture would continue unless he gave the right information, he spilled out critical information. The fear of future torture also ensures that terrorists break under it (Rd. 2, source 8). Rapport building wouldn't have worked in the Brooklyn Bridge scenario. It didn't work. Abu Zubayda didn't say anything before he was tortured. After he was tortured, he initially created false leads that resulted in some waste of resources. But when he realized that the truth was needed for the pain to stop, he spilled information - the most critical information that intelligence has received since after 9/11. Terrorists are noncompliant until they reach their threshold of pain, upon which they reveal information that rapport building fails to give. Hayd clearly loses this point, because he drops my examples of Zubayda, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the Hamas member, Jamal Beghal, John McCain and Sri Lanka. I've presented six situations in which extreme duress revealed critical information. But I don't advocate the use of torture in almost any circumstance. I'm just saying we shouldn't pass a law that prohibits torture in all circumstances; at the very least, presidential pardons should be allowed for the limited use of torture. In the rare case where rapport building won't work, when there's a major time constraint and a probable major threat, torture is justified. == Authoritarianism ==Hayd offers examples where torture led to undermining autonomy and created totalitarianism. But all those examples are merely correlations. States that practice torture aren't authoritarian because of the torture - they practice torture because they are authoritarian. He's interchanged the causation. In Russia, torture didn't lead to a totalitarian state - torture was used as a tool to make it a totalitarian state. But the use of torture in such circumstances doesn't create a totalitarian state, and none of Hayd's examples or evidence supports this. And the fact that there's even one liberal society that uses torture is sufficient to defeat the link between torture and authoritarianism. In Australia, torture is allowed in limited circumstances; Hayd's own source 12 says this. And the fact that 9 of the top 10 liberal societies don't use torture doesn't indicate authoritarianism at all. There are many non-authoritarian states where the use of torture is permitted in limited circumstances, including Australia and the United States. Hayd doesn't establish a clear link between authoritarianism and torture at all. He just gives examples of totalitarian states that used torture. This doesn't mean they became totalitarian states because they used torture to save lives. And in Russia, torture was used specifically as a tool to create an authoritarian state; it's not the limited use of torture in ticking-bomb scenarios that led to a totalitarian state. Hayd's whole premise is absurd at its face. I'll also note that the idea that any authoritarian state is one where violence exists is absurd. There are and have been authoritarian state without employment of violence against its people. Military juntas have frequently ruled countries without major human rights abuses, or at least impacts worse than ticking time bomb scenarios. A few examples reaching this conclusion is a hasty generalization, and Hayd has to prove that totalitarianism outweighs my impacts in most, or all, cases. Hayd hasn't done this, so the benefits outweigh. == Propaganda ==First, the impact from propaganda is speculative. Hayd talks about the impact of ISIS and the number of lives lost, but that impact isn't directly a result of torture. What Hayd needs to outline is the number of lives that would be saved if torture were removed. The uncertainty involved here is huge, and it's Hayd's burden of proof to outline why that impact outweighs the impact of a ticking time bomb scenario. Since Hayd hasn't done that, and since this is the last round, my impact outweighs this one. If torture is illegal, terrorist organizations will find another means of propaganda. Second, Hayd asserts that the number of ticking time bomb scenarios where torture can be used is large. This is wrong, because it's very rare that a terrorist is apprehended, and that person has knowledge of such a scenario. Furthermore, I'm only talking about ticking bomb scenarios where all other alternatives fail. Rapport building fails often due to time constraints. When lives are at risk and all alternatives fail, let a presidential pardon be given for torture. Third, Hayd says that the very existence of a law permitting torture will cause propaganda. But there doesn't need to be a law permitting torture. Presidential pardon or similar authorization is sufficient, because I don't support torture in 99% of circumstances. Torture should be used in the 1% of circumstances where nothing else can be done. While the United States currently does openly use torture, remove the status quo: use torture only in the rarest of circumstances with presidential pardons. Confidentiality can exist in such circumstances, so torture can't work as a propaganda tool. == Conclusion ==My burden in this debate was to show that, in at least one circumstance, the usage of torture is justified, and the US should allow the use of torture to that extent. I argued that torture shouldn't be permitted in almost every case, but in the cases where there is a severe time constraint that limits alternatives like rapport building, when there is a threat that outweighs the infliction of pain from torture, the use of torture is justified. I proved that torture is effective by multiple historical examples (e. g. Abu Zubayda) and by the fact that humans have an intrinsic desire to avoid pain. Hayd's response to this contention was that, 69% of the time, torture doesn't work and leads intelligence organizations on wild goose-chases. I responded to this by proving that terrorists do break under torture upon realization that it would continue unless correct information was given, and proved that the Brooklyn Bridge and the American Embassy in Paris would have been destroyed if not for torture. Hayd drops these examples, and thus concedes that torture is justified in at least some circumstances. Hayd's burden in this debate is to show that the use of torture is never justified. In other words, Hayd has to show that, even in scenarios where all other alternatives fail, there should not be any executive action that permits the use of torture. He presents three arguments in favor of this position: (1) he argues that torture is the infliction of pain, and is intrinsically immoral, (2) using torture perpetuates authoritarianism and infringes on individual liberty, causing hundreds of deaths, and (3) torture is used as propaganda by terrorist organizations to aid recruitment and terrorist actions, which outweigh torture. I refuted the first point by proving that the impact from ticking nuclear time-bomb scenarios outweighed the pain felt by those tortured. As for the second point, I proved that there isn't a clear link between authoritarianism and torture since there are democratic states that practice torture. The second point also fails because authoritarianism doesn't necessitate innocent death. The third point fails because using executive pardons allow for confidentiality, and the speculative impact is outweighed by the benefits of torture.