The use of torture is not justified or effective

And this information can be extracted through means of torture. A tool that over 141 countries around the world use, it can extract useful information that would otherwise be hard to gain. These countries have shown that the use of torture was useful in their cases, as they were able to gain access to terrorist plots, enemy movements, and other important pieces of information that could save lives. Before this debate starts, however, I would like to make some definitions: Torture: The action or practice of inflicting emotional or physical pain to make them give up information Justified: Having, done fore, or marked by a good legitimate reason (According to the New Oxford Dictionary) Effective: Successful in producing a desired or intended result (According to the New Oxford Dictionary) Keeping these definitions in mind, the opposition will show how its arguments are more rational and reasonable than the proposition's case, and why it has won this debate. 1) National Security A) Security for a family Any family wants to make sure that it's members are safe. The parents want to protect and nurture their children, and vice versa. However, without torture, this security becomes difficult. At first glance you might think, how will torture ever help a family? It's a single cog in an entire nation. Let take this as an example: A group has kidnapped the child of a family, and they threaten to kill him if the family does not hand over an extreme sum of money they do not have. The police capture a member of the group, but he refuses to reveal the location. Some might say that the use of torture in this case seems too radical to be of any use, however this is not the case. The infliction of either emotional or physical pain could be used to save a child's life and to prevent the group that kidnapped the child from getting any more power. Torture in this scenario is justified as it helped save a life, and it was effective as the kidnapper gave up the information of where the child was located. B) Security for a nation Let's take the child scenario to a bigger scale. Jean Lart"guy introduced the ticking-time bomb scenario in the novel Les Centurions. A version of this scenario takes on the following form: 1) A terrorist groups states that it has concealed a bomb in a nation's capital 2) The authorities have captured the leader of the group 3) He says that he knows where the bomb is, but he refuses to reveal the location 4) There is reasonable evidence that he will produce the information needed through the use of torture 5) If the information is extracted quickly enough, it is almost guaranteed that the bomb will be defused in time Is, then, the use of torture justified? Yes it is. It is unethical to let morality condemn hundreds or thousands of people to an avoidable death. As this debate does not talk about the morality, it is evident that torturing the terrorist for the necessary information is justified as it is done for a legitimate reason, and it was effective, as it saved thousands of lives 2) The nature of torture A) Boundaries of torture Many people argue that torture is unjustified as the torturers would often go over the boundaries to inflict serious or mortal pain onto the terrorist. However, the government could pass laws that would only allow moderate or light torture that would extract the necessary information, yet would not inflict too much pain onto the terrorist. Light torturing methods such as humiliation or sleep deprivation would be used only as a last resort to gain information necessary. Thus, torture would be effective in gaining necessary information. B) Is it effective? Many critics of torture claim that it is ineffective due to the fact people will say anything to just stop the pain, thus the information gained may not be reliable. However, there will always be some truth that will be extracted, that would be useful to the authorities. For example, the torture of Guy Fawkes in 1605 helped to gain information of who is co-conspirators were and if there were any more bombs hidden around London after they had tried to blow up King James I and the British Parliament. George Tenet, the CIA's director until 2004, had said that the use of torture "had saved lives, disrupted plots and provided invaluable information in the war against terrorism", mentioning that the program on it's own was "worth more than the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us". Thus, with these two arguments, the opposition has taken this debate home, and will explain it's own arguments further in the second round, while rebutting against the proposition's arguments. Sources: . http://america.aljazeera.com... . http://www.bbc.co.uk... . http://www.economist.com... . https://en.wikipedia.org...