Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, such as waterboarding, enhance the national security of the U.S.

"My opponent should not have put "enhanced interrogation" in the brackets as that is misleading. He should have put waterboarding." So long as you choose to correctly acknowledge waterboarding as an EIT, I am at liberty to continue replacing one term with the other. Besides, so what if waterboarding does not represent the entire category of EIT's? Do sleep deprivation, isolation, cultural humiliation, sensory bombardment, or forced nakedness sound better to a potential radical than getting a face wash? I have demonstrated that EIT's are torture, at least according to the UN's definition of torture(1). "… my opponent fails to back up this assertion with a source. He backed up the British and Canadian points, but not this one." I thought this to be intuitive since these countries are members of the UN and, unlike the United States, are bound by its rules. "EIT's leave no lasting physical or psychological effects." The UN definition of torture makes no mention of "lasting physical or psychological effects"(1). Pain can refer to immediate pain or lasting damage. "Former President George W. Bush has said that the ‘the U.S. does not torture'." Jimmy Carter(2): "That's not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored -- certainly in the last 60 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated. But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don't violate them, and you can make your own definition of torture and say we don't violate them." "Please prove to me how EIT's are torture." Once again, the UN definition of torture(1): "Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession..." Let's run through this. "Severe pain or suffering, physical or mental": I would say drowning is painful, whether you are underwater or lying on a table. "Intentionally inflicted": As sanctioned by the Bush administration. "For such purposes as obtaining from him... information": The purpose of interrogation is most often driven at information useful to the interrogator. If you dispute the UN's definition of torture, I challenge you to a new definition. Or possibly, you could use George W. Bush's since no one knows what it is. "Take most notice at 'under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land', federal law clearly trumps international law." The U.S. Constitution provides for the direct incorporation of treaties into U.S. law. According to the Treaty Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, Article VI (which you cite), treaties that are signed by the President and ratified by the Senate are the law of land directly applicable in US courts. The United States has signed and ratified of the Third Geneva Convention regarding the laws of war and the treatment of prisoners of war. This is one of the two treaties the United States has violated in the detentions in Guantanamo and of US citizens declared "enemy combatants" in the United States(3). "If American military forces did to this to al-Libi, then I would probably have a different opinion, but this is not the case, as the Egyptians did it." The question is whether EIT's enhance the national security of the US. Since this is the topic, why does it matter who engaged in using EIT's on behalf of the US? The interrogation of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whether done by Egyptian or US forces, was aimed at gaining actionable intelligence for the US, not Egypt. Since the intelligence the detainee gave was wrong, and the US used this intelligence in the context of national security, it is a clear example of the failure of EIT's. Are the Egyptians any more transparent in their methods than Americans? "I call this hearsay. There are no documents that agree with this statement." No. Expert testimony is different from hearsay. Ali Soufan was an FBI supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005, and was well versed in the use of legitimate interrogation techniques. His testimony is corroborated by what Zubaydah revealed: that Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and Jose Padilla was the so-called dirty bomber. Cheney's testimony is hearsay because, as far as I know, he never personally interrogated a detainee; he only heard about their "successes" in briefings. "Of course other interrogation techniques were used." Wikipedia, paraphrasing from Jane Mayer(4): "[Mohammed] told American interrogators he would not answer any questions until he was provided with a lawyer, which was refused to him. He was kept naked for a month during his isolation and interrogations..." I'm sorry, but the FBI does not keep prisoners naked in isolation after they ask for a lawyer. "Traditional interrogation" was never employed. "If we knew an attack was going to happen on U.S. soil in a very short amount of time, we need to be able to get information quickly." I agree that standard interrogations are not quick. However, considering it took weeks for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to cooperate under constant conditions of torture, being water boarded 183 times, neither are EIT's. Boom goes the ticker! Moreover, if all terrorists are as resilient as conservatives seem to think, Mohammed is not just a special case. The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. That doesn't sound very effective to me(5). "Nothing keeps the terrorist from giving the wrong information... the terrorist would know there is no threat to him so he can just sit on his comfy chair and say nothing instead." Nothing in this response justifies the claim that EIT's "enhance" national security. All it seems to suggest is that EIT's are ineffective, but at least we will get to torture him a little before the bomb detonates. If you expect this to support your argument, you should rephrase the debate as "there is a chance that EIT's enhance national security". There is no evidence, other than your intuitions, that EIT's make it more likely that we will gain actionable intelligence. Therefore, frankly, that is not good enough. "You never disproved my point that they said "they need to be left on the table." All you gave in proof of the claim "they need to be left on the table" is your unsupported assumption that EIT's somehow force suspects to give information more quickly than traditional methods, which contradicts the testimony of expert F.B.I. special agent Ali Soufan. You also seem to think that "ticking time bombs" justify the use of EIT's. Considering it took weeks to break Khalid Mohammed, I would say that our chances look bleak in the extremely rare case that there is a "ticking time bomb". "I am not saying it "legitimize[s] any action" but what I am saying is that the American people know that morals and foreign policy do not intersect, and that is why the majority supports EIT's." I am not sure how this supports your claim that EIT's enhance national security. All it seems to suggest is that you're too quick to make assumptions about what other people think. "EIT's used in SERE are to train forces to resist revealing the truth in situations where EIT's are being used against them." No, EIT's used in SERE are not used to obtain the truth. The object of the training is not to teach officers how to waterboard. The primary goal of the (voluntary) training is to resist giving up information under certain conditions. The primary goal is not to acquire that information (as is necessary under the UN definition of torture). That is only when the US waterboards a detainee. *Sources in Comments section