The use of torture is justified in ticking time bomb situations.

The standard CIA interrogation procedure always begins with conventional “friendly” (non-harsh) methods. For the hardened terrorists at GITMO the friendly methods worked about half the time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) was insulted that FBI interrogators thought he took his ideology so lightly that he might be charmed out of it. When friendly techniques fail, progressively harsher methods used. In some cases, a mere face slap works, because the detainee immediately realizes he is in a box, and his hope is in cooperating. About one case in five hundred at GITMO proceeded to water boarding, which then yielded extremely information. We are debating what should be allowed under time pressure with lives are at stake and conventional interrogation has failed. 1. Water boarding is effective a) Con's claim is that harsh methods should not be used at all because they are not guaranteed to work. Friendly interrogation failed about half the time at GITMO, so by Con's logic friendly interrogation should be abandoned due to it's inherent flaw of not always working. Failure to always work is not a flaw, it's a probability to deal with. The most likely outcome of not being able to use harsh methods is that hardened terrorists will provide no information. That's what KSM did. Because interrogators know some things that are true, a detainee can be caught in lies. That encourages him to tell the truth. Rodriquez reports a case in which an FBI interrogator revealed everything known about the individual in an attempt to build friendship, thereby destroying the possibility of verification. Con's [1] is Deshowitz's paper supporting torture warrants in which he points out that the problem of reliability is treated by verification; it does not support Con's case. b) Con argues that terrorists divide into cells to try to minimize the damage of one operative talking. Obviously intelligence can overcome the methods, because it does. Terrorist leadership has to know all the key participants in a particular operation, so one counter technique is to capture and interrogate the leadership. KSM gave up the link to the plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and the FBI then found the plans and foiled the plot. c) Con provides no evidence that continuing with friendly methods is more reliable. All the evidence Con provides is opinion that friendly methods might have worked. We have the specific cases of KSM and Abu Zubaydah when friendly methods did not work, and water boarding did. d) Ali Soufan, in Con's [a], worries about building a court case rather than obtaining live-saving information under time pressure. Soufan admits that he was withdrawn from interrogations when harsh methods were introduced, so he has no direct knowledge of how effective the techniques were. He says that some useful information was obtained from Zubaydah using conventional interrogation, but grants that water boarding produced the substantial results. Three sources say that Zubaydah broke after 25-30 seconds of water boarding, producing the useful information obtained. The only difference between the CIA and Soufan is whether Zubaydah gave any useful information before being water boarded. Soufan believes that befriending would have gotten everything, but the belief is not supported by evidence. e) Con's [b] asserts that water boarding worked, but the information obtained did not foil any terrorist plots. Notice the careful phrasing, “not foiling a plot” is not “did not obtain useful information.” Soufan agreed with the CIA sources that useful information was obtained. The article confirms that conventional interrogation techniques did not work, and that water boarding obtained all the information Zubaydah possessed. Interrogation must be tried without knowing how useful the outcome will be. It's the business of the CIA to piece together bits of information, discover what is true, and develop effective intelligence, and they do it. f) Con's [6] does not address ticking time bomb situations or seasoned radical terrorists. The author was an Air Force officer who did low-level interrogations in Iraq. The only example he gives is how he made friends with a 12-year-old. “By the end of his stay with us, after we had coddled him, ensured his comfort and treated him with affection despite his contempt for us, he started to warm up.” That did not work with KSM. 2. Water boarding is non-lethal a) Con argues that torture in all forms inherently corrupts the “victims.” Terrorists, the alleged victims, in the uncorrupted state randomly kill innocents to induce terror, throw acid at little girls who want to go to school, and, in the case of KSM, cut off journalists' heads on television. According to Con if they are then so much as slapped they will become corrupt. (Slapping is now banned by executive order as being a form of torture.) We have no obligation to preserve their non-corrupt state of being fanatical terrorists. Con's [3] is an opinion from an unqualified writer who makes no distinction among methods of torture. Is a face slap really just like The Rack? Con offers no evidence that “any form” of torture corrupts the victims. Con's [9] is a bogus link. Note that the CIA method of water boarding simulates drowning without the subject ingesting water; it cannot be compared to water boarding wherein water is forced down a persons throat and he actually suffers drowning. b) The Milgram Experiment assumes that there are no judicial or Congressional constraints, so that horrific methods of torture are used, and that using horrific methods will then damages the interrogators. We are debating methods limited to water boarding. Con's {2} is an abstract. The one relevant sentence says nothing about limiting torture to water boarding and the generalization is unwarranted. Con's [10] is a bogus links. No enduring psychological bad effects of water boarding have been found in either the trainers who applied it to U.S. subjects or to the subjects. Given the litigious nature of our society, if there were even the slimmest grounds for claiming damage, it's probable that someone would have sued. Suppose there is risk. Risk is part of many jobs. The firemen who rushed into the burning twin towers risked physical and psychological harm, and those harms occurred. Con's argument would make it illegal for firemen to enter burning buildings. The same applies to soldiers fighting terrorists. Risks must be taken. 3. The alternative to water boarding is rendition Con claims I failed ”to acknowledge any the more effective alternatives to torture.” In fact, I specifically addressed FBI methods and explained why they failed with hardened terrorists. Con cites a case in which rendition produced incorrect information. As I explained, that is a reason for allowing the CIA to use the specified harsh interrogation techniques. Con did not address my argument that every leader, including Obama, recognizes that sometimes when friendly methods have failed, nothing other than torture has even a chance of working. With lives at stake, torturing the terrorist even without a guarantee of success is the moral choice. 4. There is a slippery slope to complete ineffectiveness I did not claim we will never obtain information without the use of harsh tactics. Publicly banning any harsh techniques removes the incentive for terrorists to try to gain a friend during conventional interrogation. Even a face slap has been banned. The al Qaeda manual can say, "Only ask when dinner will be served. You're safe." The slippery slope is to eliminating interrogation entirely. Summary Most of my opponent's case is built on arguments that no method of interrogation is guaranteed to work, so therefore torture is pointless. But at the same time she argues that friendly methods sometimes work and so should be used. The facts are that friendly methods do sometimes work and so should be tried first, but that sometimes they do not work and then harsh, but not horrific methods, most often do work.