Torture should be legal

For starters, I offered only one example, when of course there are other situations where torture can and should be used. The reality is, that if a situation occurs, torture needs to be an option. 1. LegalityI'd like to start off by discussing the legality of torture. For starters, we signed the Geneva convention treaties with other countries, as a mutual agreement protecting each others' soldiers. However, we are not at war with anyone. No war was ever declared, and so since the people we are fighting are not fighting for a country, the Geneva Convention does not apply to them. If they were uniformed soldiers for a country, different story. But these are non-uniformed combatants, fighting a cause supported by Al Quaeda and the Taliban, not a country, so it doesn't apply to captured terrorists. No war, no treaty applies. The Geneva convention-[1]"The Third Geneva Convention, relative to the treatment of prisoners of war, is one of the four treaties of the Geneva Conventions."Important phrase-"Prisoners of war". We are not fighting a war with anyone, these are not prisoners of war, but terrorist extremist, threatening our country on their own, not representing any country. In other words, third party, non-uniformed combatants to whom the Geneva Convention does not apply. 2. IntelAs far as Intel goes, it is totally debatable. Some say it works. Others it doesn't. Fact is, when push comes to shove, do you really want to risk not being able to get the information needed to protect this Nation and it's citizens from an imminent attack? I should hope not. An example of where torture worked was the finding of Al Quaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. [2] "U.S. officials have acknowledged that two "high-value" Al-Qaeda suspects with close ties to bin Laden -- 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libi, who ran the terrorist group's operations after Mohammed's capture -- revealed information about a trusted bin Laden courier. The courier's identity was consider critical to locating bin Laden and the Abbottabad compound. "Both men were held in so-called "black sites" -- secret prisons run by the CIA that were located outside U.S. territory and where interrogators employed unusually coercive, or "enhanced," techniques that fell outside traditional interrogation guidelines. These techniques included prolonged isolation, shackling prisoners in stressful positions, and the simulated drowning process known as water boarding."Without the enhanced techniques, we may not have found him. Of course it isn't always successful. However, I'm not implying that it should be used on all terrorists captured, only on those who are believed to have valuable intelligence, such as Khalid Sheihk Mohammed and Abu Farak al-Libi, two notorious terrorist leaders. Fact is, it can work, while isn't successful 100% of the time, it isn't a failure 100% of the time either.3. Morality You say it is against the Geneva Convention, however I showed you it is not, if used on terrorist captured during peacetime, which we are in since no war was ever declared. As far as the constitutionality, first, they aren't citizens. Secondly, they wouldn't be doing their job of protecting this country if they didn't do whatever was necessary to protect it. Use of torture should be an option, a last resort option, but still available if we need it.As far as spread use of it, I do not believe we should torture our citizens. Plain and simple. We can monitor our suspicious citizens and usually capture them before anything bad happens. However, in the case of the terrorists we are fighting, most if not all of the planning takes place over seas, where we cannot monitor as efficiently. Point is, at home, we can capture them before anything bad happens, and we can monitor them a lot easier than over seas, making the use of torture unnecessary. So I do not see a need to allow Police or FBI to torture it's citizens. I also do not condone using the terrorists family or any other individual other than the terrorist in the act of torture. Perhaps stage something (set up a camera and stage an attack on the terrorists family, but not cause any direct harm whatsoever to them) but most certainly not harming them. Of course there is a ceiling of how far you can go, and harming anyone else is certainly not an option. 4. Harmful to our Troops? All I can say is, being over there is potentially harmful for our Troops. If we weren't over there, they wouldn't be in danger. To say that our Troops aren't in any danger there already is absurd. You say "torture helps empower al-Qaeda's war machine by spurring anti-American feelings with increases the recruitment numbers of the terrorist organization." Perhaps if we weren't over there for absolutely no reason in the first place, we wouldn't be under attack from a terrorist organization. And if they want to spread anti American feelings because we torture their extremists, then they can stop knocking down our towers and killing our troops.Point is, if we weren't in the middle east, we wouldn't be under attack from the Taliban or Al Quaeda, and our troops wouldn't be killed. If we really need to take them out, well, that's for another debate, but we can do so without the man power we send over there. There is no reason to worry about them spreading "anti American feelings" when they're the ones killing our citizens and troops. Conclusion Bottom line: Torture is legal in the case of terrorists not representing another country in an act of war, and it can be a useful form of interrogation. I see no reason to view it as otherwise. Use of such methods do not harm our troops, being in the Middle East, harms our troops.Vote Pro! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org...(1949)[2] http://www.rferl.org...