The US should allow the limited use of torture

Authoritarianism Tej attacks my authoritarian argument by arguing that the relationship between torture and the formation of authoritarian governments is correlation and not causation; thus torture does not “create” authoritarian states; nations merely use it as a tool to become authoritarian. Tej claims that none of my sources demonstrate the use of torture leading to an authoritarian state. Firstly, if a nation can use torture as a tool to become authoritarian, then torture leads to authoritarianism: without it the nation would not become authoritarian. Regardless, this is objectively wrong, and I urge the judge to go back and read through my evidence again. I brought up Brazil which allowed the limited use of torture through democracy, and then afterwards cascaded into authoritarianism literally because of torture: the government used it to terrorize its citizens. They justified this terror using the same utilitarian justification tej is using. This demonstrates exactly how allowing the limited use of torture leads to the rise of an authoritarian state because the literally the exact thing happened in Brazil. Based on this we can conclude that if the US, or some other nation allows the limited use of torture based on utilitarian means, the same result can, and will, happen. I brought up more examples than Brazil, which furthers the reasons to take this argument: I bring up the US after the 9/11 tragedy, the Soviet Union, the Spanish Inquisition. All of these examples were of limited torture being legalized in a non authoritarian state, and then the state using this in order to become an oppressive authoritarian regime. Given this, the judge must look at what reasons Tej has given that this won’t happen. In R3 he argues that many liberal societies have allowed torture but haven’t become authoritarian. I negated this argument by showing that if this is true we should see liberal societies that allow torture, we don’t so it's wrong. Tej responds by saying that Australia and the United States allow torture. Although I admitted to Australia not having a complete ban on torture, tej misinterprets the way in which Australia allows torture. Australia does not allow torture, as the The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission finds, the law that disallows torture does not cover torture in every circumstance; it has gaps. Australia’s Crimes (Torture) Act 1988 No. 148, 1988 criminalizes torture, “in some Australian States and Territories, other States and Territories do not have specific offences of torture although acts of torture may be criminalised under the provisions of other criminal offences (for example, assault).” [1] This is because Australia has a wacky territory, province, state system thingy that makes things complicated. So, in short, “while legislation exists which criminalises torture, there are gaps in Australia’s laws.” [1] Thus, Tej is wrong in saying that Australia *allows* the limited use of torture, because they don’t. They just have gaps that the lawmakers missed when drafting the laws that ban torture. But torture United States is not allowed in any circumstances [2] [3] [14]. Thus, Tej’s rebuttal fails, and the link between authoritarianism and torture is maintained.Tej then argues that authoritarianism does not necessitate violence. Yet this is a new argument in the final round: tej never argued that authoritarianism does not necessitate violence until now. Regardless, it is a truism that authoritarianism almost always results in mass oppression and genocide. It is common sense. Even if you don’t accept that consider the possibility of the bomb malfunctioning and not going off which is a 15% chance [6]. Thus, the rebuttal fails because there is the same chance in the bomb scenario. The judges must consider this: allowing limited use of torture only in conditions that would most likely never occur results in the formation of an oppressive authoritarian government. This would more than likely result in more lives lost than would be saved by stopping the bomb. Tej’s only rebuttal to this argument is that the impact is purely speculative, thus we must side with him. Yet this is inherently false because Tej’s impact (the lives saved by the bombs) is also inherently speculative. Thus, the impact must come down to which event is more likely to occur: a near impossible bomb scenario, or the formation of authoritarian governments. The latter is more likely than the former because of my historical arguments that tej has failed to negate. And even by some crazy observation the judge finds the two to be almost equal (or even the bomb more likely) the latter would still take more lives than the former, thus prefer the latter based on impact calculus. PropagandaTej brings up that my impact in this argument is speculative. While I do not have an exact number of how many lives will be saved by reducing the amount of terrorists, tej has not brought up an exact number of how many lives would be taken in a bomb scenario either. In fact, his number is even more speculative than the amount that I bring up. It would realistically make sense that it would be a few thousand at most, but tej’s case doesn’t lie in realistic scenarios at all. So the more impact that tej gets (the more lives lost), the less realistic (and more speculative) his side becomes. So *turn* tej’s logic here to work against him: since the uncertainty on Pro’s side is huge and I have a less speculative amount, my impact outweighs. I have also compared my impact to Pro’s the entire debate, at most Pro might hold an extremely speculative thousand lives, but I showed that ISIS alone takes 21,000 lives. Taking away their top reason for recruitment would at least decrease the majority of their numbers. From that we can reasonably say (since it is their top method of recruitment) maybe a fifth of members don’t join. That would reasonably cut their strength and thus killing effectiveness by 20% resulting in 4,200 saved lives. And that's a conservative estimate, given it is their top recruitment it ought to be more, most reasonably half, but the point is still made this way. My speculation is more clearer than Pro’s thus prefer my side, and even if you don’t my impact still outweighs Pro’s. Pro changing his framework to Presidential pardons is a new argument in the final round, thus do not accept it. EffectivenessTej has brought the debate to time constraints, arguing that in cases where time constraints are a problem, torture ought to be used. This is wrong because false confessions are still a problem (i.e. we are more likely to get accurate information from quick rapport-building than we are to get it from torture.) Thus *even if* the judge accepts that only torture can be used in time-constraint scenarios we still shouldn’t use it because it would be net detrimental to the situation. But this is all irrelevant because there is no reason to believe that rapport-building cannot be used in short-term scenarios, and even if the judge decides to believe that rapport building cannot be used in short-term scenarios; there furthermore is no reason to believe that torture would take any shorter. Tej’s only argument for why rapport-building takes more time than torture is an appeal to authority fallacy. Tej provides no reasoning or data for why this is true, just an author that said so. And since we can’t access any of the reasoning behind the claim, this argument has no warrant and is weightless. On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that rapport-building takes long amounts of time. In many scenarios it takes a day or two [5]. On the other hand, as my examples in R2 showed, torture takes many months to break someone's will. So actually rapport-building should be used instead of torture because it takes less time. Tej then argues that since torture works less than 31% of the time, we still ought to try it because there is no harm in trying. But there is, as I have argued the entire debate. The harms in trying will be false information and false leads.Tej argues that in the study on false confessions, the students had no duress. Yet, the study did, the student was yelled at and placed blame on, I urge the judge to go back and read the study. This rebuttal also assumes that this is my only piece of evidence for torture producing false confessions, but I have numerous amounts of reasoning from torture experts, neuroscientists, and psychologists all of which tej dropped. Even if the judge doesn’t accept this study (which they should), it doesn’t matter because my other pieces of evidence prove the same point.This point essentially comes down to this. Tej brings up a few isolated examples in which torture worked. I brought up that the majority of the time the torture brings no information, and when it does bring information it is false information more than half the time. So, judge, if you were the detective and there was a bomb going off in 24 hours and you had someone that knew the combination. You can use torture, which has only worked two or three times ever, the rest of the times it didn’t bring any information or it brought false information that wasted time and resources finding it. Even if you were to get the right information, it would take months to get the information, much more than the 24 hours (even the isolated incidents Pro brings up took long amounts of time to get.) Or you can use rapport-building which will take much less time, and will be 4 times more likely to find the accurate information and resolve the situation. If you choose the first option vote Pro, if you choose the second vote Con. [1] http://tinyurl.com...[2] http://tinyurl.com...[3] http://tinyurl.com...[4] http://tinyurl.com...[5] http://tinyurl.com...[6] http://tinyurl.com...