The United States should allow the limited use of torture.

I honestly do appreciate my opponent's sincere effort to beat me. However, in his eagerness to defeat me, he has allowed his powers of reasoning to wane ever so slightly. Among other things, I can see this debate starting to become slightly dirtied with the specter of semantics. Such tactics never fail to bore me. Deliberately confusing words is not my modus operandi; I don't play that game. As the record will show, my own arguments should be given more weight than those of my opponent because they are built upon a well grounded body of facts and logic. A1: Torture Violates International and Domestic Law The fact that torture has been outlawed in many countries for a long time does not demonstrate that we shouldn't engage in torture. Moreover, my opponent says that the government shouldn't be entrusted with the power to torture people. However, I don't see the power behind the reasoning of his argument. By my opponent's own logic, the government should not be allowed to engage in war, since government sponsored wars have also been used to commit crimes and subjugate innocent people. This is an absurd position; therefore, the conclusion of my opponent's argument should be rejected. Furthermore, saying that something should be allowed doesn't necessarily mean that it should be legal. For example, if I were to steal a car to save someone's life, the police will have allowed me to act in that manner, insofar as they don't arrest me or press charges later on. Similarly, whether torture is legal or not, the government will be allowing torture if it refuses to prosecute certain instances of torture. In either case, the resolution can be adequately maintained. Accordingly, my opponent's attempt to play semantics has failed. A2: Torture Creates Blowback Risk Neither my opponent's argument nor his irrelevant source in this section manages to demonstrate his conclusion. The fact that the CIA ran Abu Ghraib doesn't change any of the other relevant facts. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are in no way analogous to the instances of torture I have defended. They are, in fact, false comparisons. As such, the conclusions my opponent draws in this section are irrelevant. And even if my opponent's assertion was both 100 percent true and extremely important, it would simply be immaterial to numerous instances of torture that take place outside of the confines of a war. A3: In Fourth Generation Warfare, the Moral Battle is Crucial What is at work here is not my supposed attempt to equivocate; it is, rather, my opponent's attempt to play with words. If my opponent wants me to interpret the word "moral" to mean "gaining popular support," then he shouldn't have been so ambiguous in his second round. I simply do not possess the requisite omniscience necessary to predict what my opponent really means by the words he chooses to use. Additionally, Con's claim that my utilitarian calculus on these matters undermines my own position is simply unsupported. As was demonstrated earlier, this argument is based off of the false comparison my antagonist has laid out between my argument and the events at Abu Ghraib. Moreover, not all (or even most) emergency situations that may require torture take place in the context of a military campaign. C1: Torture can be a feasible means of gathering information. Mr. Kenyon has argued at length that torture doesn't work. I've given evidence to the contrary, but let's set that aside. As the journalist Megan Mcardle points out, even if torture didn't work at all, that would not be a reasonable basis to conclude that we shouldn't use it. Rather, it could merely be an argument that we should improve our techniques. If, for example, we managed to create reliable functional neuroimaging lie detectors, then torture could become extremely effective. [1] As a neuroscience major, I am in a good position to appreciate just how likely this actually is. Indeed, this prospect alone renders every single one of my opponent's sources on the efficacy of torture completely irrelevant. In this context, it is also important to reflect upon the fact that Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before he finally created a light bulb that consistently worked. [2] Obviously, the fact that something doesn't work well now doesn't prove that it will never work well later on. On a side note, the words my opponent cites about the ticking time bomb case were not mine; they belong to Alan Dershowitz. I did not bring them up to limit the scope of my own proposal. I brought them up to address various concerns people may have with my argument. Additionally, the vagueness of my opponent's question about torturing someone in police custody puts me behind a veil of ignorance. My answer on this matter would vary depending on other relevant facts that are not available to me. C2: Torture can be ethically justified in certain circumstances. I think it's a good thing that the nuclear material from Russia was safely recovered. However, this does not alter the fundamental issue here. My opponent's beliefs about nuclear proliferation are completely unsubstantiated. Harvard's Belfer Center and the United Nations International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism both agree on this point. [3] The notion that the United States is in perfect control of all of the nuclear weapons and nuclear material around the globe at every moment of every day is a faith position that is demonstrably false. Moreover, my opponent claims that I still haven't managed to demonstrate why the logic of my own position doesn't lead down a slippery slope. To this assertion, I have a simple answer: It would be inappropriate and illogical to utilize torture in any situation that wasn't extremely grave. The cost benefit ratio of harming people with torture that makes it desirable in some situations would simply be set off balance if it were used in common situations. C3: Incurring collateral damage is far worse morally than the torture of certain people. Once again, Con agrees with me on this point. However, he denies that the argument is important by maintaining that torture is useless and that it is dangerous to act on information gathered from torture. His thoughts here are without merit. As I've pointed out earlier, technology will, at some point in the not so distant future, allow torture to become incredibly effective. Ergo, by acknowledging the force of my ethical argument for torture, he has managed to create the demise of his own position. ::Conclusion:: As it turns out, none of my opponent's three primary arguments can withstand honest scrutiny. His first argument is orthogonal to the resolution. The conclusion of his second argument is based off of a false comparison and is rather limited in scope, even if it were perfectly valid. Lastly, his third argument is simply based off of the poor conclusions that were arrived at in his second argument. On the other hand, it should be quite clear that I have managed to successfully defend the two major premises of my argument. Torture is both effective enough to merit its use. And it can be reasonably justified in ethical terms. Indeed, even my opponent agrees with this second point, although he denies that torture is effective at gathering information. By doing this, he has (whether or not he realizes it) conceded the debate. The rapid expansion of scientific knowledge makes it very likely that torture will be extremely effective sometime in the near future. Consequently, the weight of the arguments leans heavily in support of the resolution. Sources: http://www.debate.org...