Torture is sometimes morally permissible.

I am sorry for the delay in posting... my internet has been extremely spotty the last few days, and I'm not sure I'll even make it to the end of this post. Firstly, I'll cover my opponent's examples. The exampels are extremely flawed, and here's the main line showing why this is. "For the sake of the argument let us assume the ONLY two VIABLE options" But we can never assume these are the ONLY options. Obviously this example would never happen in real life, and even if it did (because it COULD happen, in the resolutional world), there are ALWAYS, ALWAYS other options. My opponent tries to narrow this down to a simple yes/no, but I assure you it is never that simple. Don't let this be narrowed down to two simple choices. Though my opponent's arguments don't seem to be entirely relevant, I will cover them briefly here. War is a necessary evil. It is never going to go awaybecause of mankind's own violent nature. If an invading nation attacks us, we have no choice but to defend ourselves. However, if we start stooping to the level of causing pain ourselves, we arejust as bad as our enemies. Here are a few definitions to define key terms: Torture: "the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure" In this debate, we would obviously be looking at torture with the intention to coerce someone into saying something. Moral: "of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ethical" Firstly, Collateral damage: This is all irrelevant. Yes, it is bad. No, it does not make it moral. The intentions in torture and war are so different that the two cannot be compared. Nowhere does my opponent actually show why this is morally permissible, therefore it is non-resolutional and falls. My case: Naturally, my main statement remains: Torture is immoral. However, in order to better define the scope of the resolution, my case will deal with the alternatives to torture that work just as well and save our morality. Contention 1: Cooperation can be used more effectively than torture. Coercing, instead of torturing, prisoners, helped the U.S. military track down and kill Abu Masub al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Matthew Alexander, a former interrogator, said, "When you use coercion, a detainee might tell you the location of a house, but if you use cooperation they will tell you if the house is booby-trapped, and that's a very important difference." Fifteen former United States interrogators and intelligence officers found that torture is ineffective and counterproductive through their experience with it. They found rapport-based interviewing to be the best way to obtain "accurate and complete intelligence". As we can see, torture will not only immoralize us, but will be less effective than cooperative methods. Contention 2: Information obtained through torture is unreliable Dinah PoKempner, the general counsel for the watchdog group Human Rights Watch in New York, stresses that information provided under duress is inherently unreliable. "The problem is that torture is not only morally reprehensible, it's also extremely ineffective. The body adjusts to pain. You often have to really ratchet up the treatment in order to get someone to talk to you. And then when they talk to you, they are talking to stop the treatment and not necessarily to tell you the truth," PoKempner says. When someone is being tortured, they're just as likely to give you false information as true information, and we can't afford that kind of problem.