Waterboarding should be legal in the United States.

Waterboarding is used to collect life-saving informationConsider the following hypothetical: A nuclear weapon goes missing in Pakistan. The trail leads to New York City, and coded e-mails implicate a certain Pakistani national, identified as a member of al Qaeda, as instrumental in smuggling the bomb into the U.S. by landing it on an unprotected coast where it would be picked by up and transported by truck to an undisclosed location for detonation. A search warrant is obtained, and the New York terrorist is arrested. His computer files reveal his deep involvement in the plot, but some files cannot be decoded and the suspect refuses to talk, proclaiming that soon it will be too late to interrogate him.Under present law, President Obama could choose to revoke his executive order and allow waterboarding in this case. here is no guarantee that water boarding would work, but there is significant probability that it would. There is no guarantee that if waterboarding works, that the bomb could be recovered before it is exploded. It's not likely, but possible, the terrorist might suffer permanent harm from the waterboarding. he resolution does not demand that the intransigent terrorist be waterboarded; it allows the President to make the tradeoff and to order waterboarding if that protecting the United States requires. The Con position is that waterboarding should never be used, and it should be illegal under all circumstances.I provided a list of the types of information that could properly lead to a warrant for waterboarding. Con argued that the standards of absolute certainty should be used. I pointed out that absolute certainty is never used in law, because it is obviously unachievable. No person could ever be found guilty of anything, nor could wartime enemies ever be fought on any scale. Con did not justify his use of "absolute certainty" as the appropriate standard.Waterboarding is effective.Waterboarding is only used as a last resort. Only three of the 1500 GITMO terrorists were waterboarded. Con did not deny that it worked, revealing, for example, a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge that would have killed a thousand innocent people. Con argues that even though it worked to save lives, that there is some definition of "effective' it does not meet. The only thing relevant is that at least sometimes it saves lives. Con's approach is so cite general opinions of the method being ineffective, while never contradicting the specific evidence of it working. Con cites the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence committee as claimed there was, in there examination, no evidence that waterboarding was effective. Con's cited source reveals that the reason Republicans did not participate in the hearings was that it was known at the outset that the important evidence and witnesses would not be available to the Committee because it remained secret at the time. Democrats decided to proceed even though they knew the evidence would not be presented. They then concluded what they knew at the outset, that they didn't have the evidence. They did have opinion of all e Preceding CIA director's,starting with George Tennet, who President Bush retained from the Clinton Administration. Thus excluded from "evidence" were the opinions of the people most likely to know all the facts.Con argued that people will confess to anything under waterboarding. that's why waterboarding is never to be used to extract confessions. The purpose is to collect actionable information to save lives. Informants. whether waterboarded or not, often provide false information. The important fact is that good information is also produced, and it is verified by the security agencies.There is little or no danger of permanent harm to the subjectIn the opening round, I quoted the definition of waterboarding used by the CIA. The CIA method uses simulated drowning it which water is not taken into the body. Con cited a study of waterboarding practiced in past history in which the person was actually drowned, with water taken into the lungs. In the last round, Con again referenced an example of waterboarding using actual drowning rather than the CIA method. there is plenty of experience with the CIA waterboarding techniques. Thousands of U.S. special forces and CIA agents have been subjected to the technique as part of their training. There is also a small number of journalists who have volunteered as subjects. Not a single case of permanent harm is know. None of the terrorists has suffered permanent harm.The study Con cited was not the CIA technique, and we don't know what else the subjects endured. Are we to believe that historically, as practiced by the Chinese and North Koreans, their prisoners were only under medically supervised simulated drowning and nothing else? Con said there were other studies, but he didn't cite any.The only alternative is renditionTerrorists could choose to avoid waterboarding All they would have to do is sign on to the Geneva convention's or independently negotiate an agreement to obey the conventional rules of warfare. Giving up the practice of cutting off journalist heads on television is too much for them to accept. I claim that no moral person would accept the probable death of thousands of innocent people if harsh interrogation of a terrorist offered a chance of saving them. If waterboarding is illegal, the only avenue for a moral president to use is turning the terrorist over to another country for the harsh interrogation. President Clinton used rendition, and President Bush allowed waterboarding as a more humane and more reliable alternative. President Obama has kept the alternative of rendition alive. Waterboarding is both more humane and more reliable.Con said it was a false dichotomy, but it's a real dichotomy for a moral person. The escape is to care more about the terrorist than the innocent people.Terrorists are already terroristsI challenged Con to say what KSM would do that was worse than cutting off heads of television. He didn't say. Con pointed to cases of indiscriminate use of torture. That's not what the resolution affirms. It's critical that all the safeguards be maintained, and especially that use of harsh interrogation could be stopped by subscribing to the conventional rules of warfare. What Con described was two sides both dominated by terrorist mentality. In any case, the President should be allowed to evaluate the tradeoffs of the information potentially gained versus potential downside of publicity. That cannot be done if a law against waterboarding is illegal. If hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake from a nuclear weapon, the downside of publicity will lose every time.Waterboarding will never be a common practice, just as it was only used on three ITMO detainees. The safeguards will ensure that it will only be used when the odds favor saving lives. Terrorists renounce all civil behavior, so it's a modest countermeasure when it's the moral choice. The resolution is affirmed.