Torture should be legal

Thanks for the debate. R1: Legality Since most terrorists are not part of a country, that Geneva Conventions wouldn't apply to them. However the Constitution's 8th amendment states: "No person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," and the Eighth Amendment explicitly disallows the infliction of "cruel and unusual punishment." [1] That text says clearly that cruel and unusual punishment inflicted by the US is unconstitutional. It does not make exceptions saying it is okay for the US to inflict torture on non citizens. Thus, torture is not legal.R2: Bad IntelligenceMy opponent goes on to show an example in which torture did work. Fact is however, that torture is an inhumane method that is barbaric in nature and is less effective than other humane conventional methods of collecting information. This is an empirical fact, that my opponent has failed to dispute. The United States military has found and explicitly says,"Use of torture is not only illegal but also a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the HUMINT (Human Intelligence) collector wants to hear." [2]Furthermore, torture of Americans by Vietnamese in the Vietnam War only had a success rate of 5%. [3] Think of all the others that would be harmed through the legality of this barbaric practice.Many subjects are put in heavy pain necessary to "break" the subject to get information, and the subject frequently becomes so disoriented that they are incapable of rational thought. He becomes unaware of the truth, and this only proves and supports the empirical fact that only 5% of torturing is successful. As I said earlier, most information collected leads to bad evidence, and torture is not effective as conventional, humane means. The Israeli Supreme Court found torture no more effective than humane means of information collection, and the US Army finds torture as counter intuitive. The actions from these prominent institutions, as well as the empirical evidence that supports their decision making, show that torture is ineffective, counterintuitive, and thus shouldn't be legal.My opponent claims that an Al Qaeda operative was tortured and this lead to good information. The man was tortured 183 times before he released information. And remember the statistic that only 5% of information from torture is actually useful! [4] Wouldn't this be awesome propoganda for the al Qaeda recruitment/ war machine? Seriously?!?Other methods, such as brain fingerprinting, are vastly more successful than the barbaric inhumane practices known as torture. [5] Brain fingerprinting is a specific example of a conventional method of getting information.About the slipperly slope, my opponent (fortunately) says that he also opposes families being harmed. This does not really finish this argument contention though, now does it? Fact is, if torture is useful for information (it is not), but if we had it legal, it would be only immoral NOT to torture others for useful information as well! THIS is the point I was making, and was not refuted.Case in point, the legality of torture would slipperly slope possibly into torturing other citizens for the hope of useful information.R3: Harms the TroopsThere has seemed to be a misunderstanding. We are both clearly on the level belief that currently our adventures in the middle east are causing opposition to grow by groups like al Qaeda and other terrorists. However, my point was connected to this background.I stated that torture by the US helps al Qaeda. In addition to the US being over in other nations like we are now in the Middle East, torture helps spur further anti-American resentment and increases al Qaeda recruitment numbers. [6] I showed empirical evidence of this being indeed true. In fact, this is one reason the US army opposes the use of torture, it hurts American soldiers indirectly. Furthermore, the terrorists of al Qaeda beheaded US army soldier Nick Berg because of torture that was inflicted by American troops. [7] This is counter intuitive.Conclusion: Torture is not as effective as conventional, humane methods of getting information Torture is counter intuitive, leading to bad intelligence Torture increases support among our enemies, and making us lose the moral high ground Torture cannot be inflicted by the US as said in the Constitution, torture is thus unconstitutional Torture can easily slipperly slope into torture inflicted on average citizens, which if it gained information as my opponent (falsely) asserts, it would thus be immoral to not get information via torture from our citizens Ticking Time Bomb Scenarios rarely ever occur, and torture would not be the way to solve it. The case my opponent brought up, it took over 180 different occasions of waterboarding torture to get any information. Considering the evidence, Vote CONTRA.Sources:[1] AP Government and Politics, 2009. Pearson Education[2] http://www.ritholtz.com...[3] Stockdale, James Bond. (2001). Courage under fire. In Department of Philosophy and Fine Arts, United States Military Academy (Eds.), Moral dimensions of the military profession (5th edn.) (pp. 321-334). P. 328.[4] http://thinkprogress.org...[5] http://www.brainwavescience.com...[6] http://www.lewrockwell.com... [7] http://en.wikipedia.org...