There are situations conceivable when torture can be justified.

Let me begin by thanking mongoose for his time and for his writing. Take special notice to the fact that my opponent has been breaking my rules left and right throughout this debate. For example, despite the fact that I have stated that semantics would not be tolerated one of the first things he does in his first round is to proceed by playing semantics with the word semantics. It would appear that casuistry of this sort has no practical limits. I apologize to the people that were expecting a more meaningful debate. =================== Examining the arguments: =================== My opponent's case is essentially comprised of only two contentions. Upon close examination neither of these contentions holds any water. -----> My definition of torture doesn't allow for torture in the situation I have outlined. Lets pay close attention to the very first part of my definition for torture. "Torture- For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as" The last three words are very important, which are "such purposes as". What do these words mean exactly? For the sake of convenience we can shorten this phrase to "such as" since it essentially means the same thing as its predecessor. Both phrases are used to identify lists. such as- (idiomatic) like, of the kind mentioned. . http://en.wiktionary.org... By this light we can clearly see that the words "such as" or "such purposes as" are used to set off a list of things relating to a certain kind of something. This doesn't logically mean that everything in a given list contains the entirety of the "kind" of thing that is being referred to, insofar as the definition for something contains a version of the phrase "such as". For example, I could say that my favorite fruits are sweet fruits "such as" strawberries, mangoes, and apples. This doesn't imply either explicitly or implicitly that the only fruits I like are strawberries, mangoes, and apples. Nor does this imply that strawberries, mangoes, and apples are the only fruits in existence that are sweet. To argue otherwise would require one to be illogical. Having established this it logically follows that the entirety of what constitutes torture would not be limited by my definition because it contains the essential phrase, "such purposes as". And from a proper exegesis of the definition it is clear that the qualification for torture involves severe punishment to achieve some goal. Given this analysis I will add one more example of torture that is salient with my definition and meaningful to this debate. "Torture- For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as" – achieving some political or social goal like saving the lives of a group of people. -----> The scenario I outlined is physically impossible. There is nothing logically impossible about my situation. It assumes from the outset that there are no other good choices to choose from, for the sake of the argument. Your captors have stripped you of weapons and any other means of retaliation. This is why I stated that creating other choices wouldn't be allowed. My opponent created three bogus options for himself as escape methods to avoid the resolution, none of which are permitted because I put a rule in my first round that these wouldn't be allowed. After doing this he claims that these must be allowed or else my ethical dilemma would somehow be violating the laws of physics. It's a shame that any time should have to go into fending off these baseless assertions. The only thing that would violate the laws of physics in the context of this debate would be the creation of the gun and anesthetics that magically pop into existence ex nihilo for the convenience of my antagonist's argument. Clearly there are lots of ways this event could be different, but in order to avoid the sort of elusion my opponent has tried to engage in I have disallowed creating them. Only two choices are logically possible in my situation. The first would be to torture the man and the second would be to not torture him. Consequentially every choice conceivable would either fall under one of these two categories. And I have already shown earlier what the outcomes of these choices would be. ======== Conclusion ======== After my opponent's fallacious arguments have been disposed of he doesn't have a leg to stand on. And clearly the scenario I have outlined would be a situation where torture would be justified.