BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

Under one interrogation technique, a subject might be kept awake for several days and when finally allowed to fall asleep, suddenly awakened and questioned. Menachem Begin, the Prime Minister of Israel from 1977-83, described his experience of sleep deprivation when a prisoner of the KGB in Russia as follows: "In the head of the interrogated prisoner, a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep...Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it.[citation needed] In rats, prolonged, complete sleep deprivation increases both food intake and energy expenditure, leading to weight loss and, ultimately, death. This evidence indicates that sleep deprivation inflicts severe suffering and even pain or death on its victims, thus constituting torture.
Enhanced interrogations are often too aggressive, amounting to torture.

The Washington Post reported in January 2009 that Susan J. Crawford, convening authority of military commissions, stated in response to the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker" of the September 11 attacks: "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent.... You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive."[33]
President has sole discretion to interpret i-law during war

At the heart of policies in the "War on Terror" is the notion that during a time of war the President, in his duty as Commander-in-Chief, cannot be bound by law, i.e., Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, UN Convention Against Torture, Geneva Conventions- or Congress. Since the primary task of the President during a time of war is protecting US citizens, anything hindering him in that capacity -US and international law or even Congress- can be considered unconstitutional. John Yoo contends that the Congressional check on Presidential war making power comes from its power of the purse, and that the President, and not the Congress or courts, has sole authority to interpret international treaties such as the Geneva Convention "because treaty interpretation is a key feature of the conduct of foreign affairs". These views on executive power are known as the unitary executive theory.
Enhanced interrogations unnecessary; Army Field Manual is sufficient

A bill on interrogation techniques was passed on February 13, 2008 in the US Senate, in a 51 to 45 vote, limiting the number of techniques allowed to only "those interrogation techniques explicitly authorized by the 2006 Army Field Manual." This aimed to eliminate enhanced interrogation techniques, based on the argument that the Army Field Manual is sufficient to obtain information from prisoners, ensure national security, and uphold US norms of justice. Based on the same premises, President Obama signed a January 11th, 2009 executive order halting "enhanced interrogations" and reverting back to the Army Field Manuel guidelines.
Non-state terrorists are not protected under international law.

John Yoo's analysis that the US President was not bound by the Geneva Conventions, and was free to implement enhanced interrogations even if they flaunted these conventions, was based upon work about World War II by Carl Schmitt. Examples of arguments used by Schmitt (according to Horton): "Particularly on the Eastern Front, the conflict was a nonconventional sort of warfare being waged against a “barbaric” enemy which engaged in “terrorist” practices, and which itself did not observe the law of armed conflict. Individual combatants who engaged in “terrorist” practices, or who fought in military formations engaged in such practices, were not entitled to protections under international humanitarian law, and the adjudicatory provisions of the Geneva Conventions could therefore be avoided together with the substantive protections."[25] By this logic, according to Yoo, modern Islamic terrorists are not protected by the Geneva conventions either.
Secret prisons protect methods in a time of war.

It is critical in a time of war that one's enemy not know the interrogations methods that might be employed against their men. If these methods are known, the enemy will prepare their men to effectively withstand and evade the techniques, which will result in an inability to obtain information that was before potentially obtainable. The security of the United States will be weakened, and American lives possibly lost. This is why secret prisons are important and justified during war.
Enhanced interrogations are cruel/immoral, even if not torture

In November 2006, former US army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, in charge of Abu Ghraib prison until early 2004, told Spain's El Pais newspaper said of Bush Administration interrogation tactics: "The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorised these specific techniques....Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." The Universal Declaration of Human Rights agreed that Article 5 prohibits "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." Enhanced interrogations inherently qualify as such cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment; that is their specific intention - to degrade the prisoner to a point where they become "more willing" to comply and provide information.[26]
Americans won't tolerate lost lives for political correctness

Brianp55 commented on April 22, 2009 on the CBS News article "Is 'Enhanced Interrogation' Justifiable?": "Let's say that you arrest the head of an Al Queda cell who you believe has information about an iminent attack against the US homeland or other US facility. You sit down in front of the guy and ask him to tell you what he knows. He tells you to get screwed...in the name of Allah. Thousands of your fellow Americans could be killed. What do you do? How do you think the American public is going to react when they fnd out that you could have used 'enhanced interrogation' techniques to extract the information and prevent this attack, but you did not because you wanted your actions to be politically correct?"[15]
Coercive interrogation techniques are generally abhorrent.

Any interrogation technique that attempts to coerce individuals into providing information or confessions against their will is inherently degrading and morally abhorrent. Coercion by force or intimidation inherently violates the integrity and dignity of an individual with the hope of exploiting that moment of vulnerability to obtain information or gain some advantage. This is abhorrent because it violates principles of human decency and dignity, even toward enemies that would not grant us such dignity.
Geneva Conventions apply to all prisoners, including terrorists.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that, contrary to what the Bush administration advocated, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all detainees in the war on terrorism and as such the Military Tribunals used to try suspects were violating the law. The Court reaffirmed that those involved in mistreatment of detainees violate US and international law.[27]
Terrorists' methods do not justify enhanced interrogations

Letter from General John Vessey, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Senator McCain opposing a proposed redefinition of Common Article 3 (the humane treatment standard) of the Geneva Conventions, September 12, 2006: "I continue to read and hear that we are facing a ‘different enemy’ in the war on terror; no matter how true that may be, inhumanity and cruelty are not new to warfare nor to enemies we have faced in the past. In my short 46 years in the armed forces Americans confronted the horrors of prison camps of the Japanese in World War II, the North Koreans in 1950-53, and the North Vietnamese in the long years of the Vietnam War, as well as knowledge of the Nazi’s holocaust depredations during World War II. Through those years, we held our own values. We should continue to do so."[28]
"Enhanced interrogations are similar to Nazi methods

Andrew Sullivan, a conservative blogger for The Atlantic, wrote on May 29, 2007 that many of the interrogative techniques condoned by the Bush administration were used by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s: "The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death."[35]
US President has sole discretion on enhanced interrogations

US Department of Justice Memo, March 14, 2003, justifying enhanced interrogation techniques - "In wartime, it is for the President alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy. ... One of the core functions of the Commander in Chief is that of capturing, detaining, and interrogating members ofthe enemy. ... It is well settled that the President may seize and detain enemy combatants, at least for the duration of the conflict, and the laws ofwar make clear that prisoners may be interrogated for information concerning the enemy, its strength, and its plans."
"Enhanced interrogations" were adapted from abusive foreign tactics.

A bipartisan report in December 2008 established that, "harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the U.S. military were directly adapted from the training techniques used to prepare special forces personnel to resist interrogation by enemies that torture and abuse prisoners. The techniques included forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, and until 2003, waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning."[36]
US Constitution does not apply to enemy combatants

A US Department of Justice Memo written on March 14, 2003 read: "we conclude that the Fifth and Eighth Amendments, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, do not extend to· alien enemy combatants held abroad. In Part IT, we examine federal criminal law. We explain that several canons of construction apply here. Those canons of construction indicate that federal criminal laws of general applicability do not apply to·properly~authorized interrogations of enemy combatants, undertaken by military personnel in the course of an armed conflict. Such criminal statutes, if they were misconstrued to apply to the interrogation of enemy combatants, would conflict with the Constitution's. grant of the Commander in Chiefpower solely to the President."[29]
Efficacy cannot justify inhumane/illegal enhanced interrogations

The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture [or, enhanced interrogations, which inflict pain and suffering and most UN scholars consider to qualify as torture under international law]." More generally, the effectiveness of enhanced interrogations misses the point. Enhanced interrogations are illegal, or at least they are morally abhorrent. No amount of efficacy can justify taking these illegal and immoral actions. A line must be drawn.
Waterboarding leaves no lasting scars and so is not torture

- Torture is defined by many groups as a only techniques that leaves lasting physical damage and scars on the person being tortured. This is not the case with waterboarding, which causes no permanent damage to the lungs and does not have a track record of causing lasting mental trauma to those that perform the techniques. If this was the case, the United States military would not perform waterboarding on its own soldiers for training purposes. While international organizations would take issue with a definition of torture that only includes physical damage, it would be a mistake to overlook the rational behind this definition.
Enhanced interrogations don't inflict severe pain/suffering (not torture).

The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate US prohibitions against torture if their methods avoided inflicting "severe pain and suffering". The main reason for this is that prisoners can tolerate a little bit of discomfort and even pain, but severe pain and suffering can have the effect of lasting bodily or psychological damage. Enhanced interrogations succeed at allowing interogators to inflict some discomfort and low-level pain - waterboarding, slapping on the belly, sensory bombardment, prolonged isolation all qualify as such - in order to succeed in obtaining critical national security intelligence, while avoiding the higher level "severe pain and suffering" that could be called "torture".[19]
Claims about effectiveness of enhanced interrogations are dubious

The recently released memos from the Office of Legal Counsel for the White House indicate that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month.[7] This casts serious doubt on the idea that "abu Zubaida...broke in less than a minute." Also, according to several U.S. intelligence officials, the Library Tower plot may never have been serious to begin with, and the timing of Bush's speech giving more detail about the plot may have been politically motivated, as it was given on the same day as a Senate hearing on warantless wiretapping.[8]
US halted waterboarding early in the Bush Administration.

ABC News' Luis Martinez reported in a January 15, 2009 article: "Former CIA director Michael Hayden said the legality of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques is an 'uninteresting question to the CIA' right now because the agency has not engaged in the practices since March 2003. 'We don't do that. We haven't done in it since March 2003. We have no intent to do it,' said Hayden."[37]
Enhanced interrogations do not violate US due process laws

US Department of Justice Memo, March 14, 2003, justifying enhanced interrogation techniques - "We conclude below that the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause is inapplicable to the conduct of interrogations of alien enemy combatants held outside the United States for two independem reasons. First, the. Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause does not apply to the President's conduct of a war. Second, even if the Fifth Amendment applied to the conduct of war, the Fifth Amendment does not apply extraterritorially to aliens who have no connection to the United States. We address each of these reasons in turn."
Interrogations are not torture when no intent to torture.

The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate US prohibitions against torture unless they "have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering", according to a previously secret US Justice Department memo released on 24 July 2008. The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds. "Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture", Jay Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, wrote in the memo.
Waterboarding inflicts severe pain and suffering ("torture")

- The consensus definition of torture in such conventions as the UN Convention against torture, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Courts is that it inflicts "severe pain and suffering" for the purpose of extracting information or a confession. Waterboarding inflicts "severe pain and suffering" by making its victim feel as though they are drowning and that their own death is inevitable. The terror of a near death experience can certainly be described as suffering and the pain of having your lungs filled with water and approaching near suffocation can be described as pain. Thus, water boarding inflicts "severe pain and suffering" and can be described as torture.
Aggressive enhanced interrogation techniques were rarely used.

George Tenet wrote in his 2007 book, "At the Center of the Storm" (pp 241-42): "The most aggressive interrogation techniques conducted by CIA personnel were applied to only a handful of the worst terrorists on the planet, including people who had planned the 9/11 attacks and who, among other things, were responsible for journalist Daniel Pearl’s death. The interrogation of these few individuals was conducted in a precisely monitored, measured way intended to try to prevent what we believed to be an imminent follow-up attack."[20]
Verifying effectiveness of enhanced interrogations is too difficult

Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in a May 30, 2005, memo to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo: "It is difficult to quantify with confidence and precision the effectiveness of the program." In the face of such inherent doubt, the program should be scrapped, as the moral, legal, and international diplomatic costs would have to be outweighed by crystal clear signals of the program's effectiveness.
With pre-1967 borders, PLO would recognize Israel, end conflict

"PLO chief: We will recognize Israel in return for 1967 borders." Haaretz. October 13th, 2010: "Senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Yasser Abed Rabbo said on Wednesday that the Palestinians will be willing to recognize the State of Israel in any way that it desires, if the Americans would only present a map of the future Palestinian state that includes all of the territories captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem. In response to U.S. State Department Spokesman Phillip Crowley's statement on Tuesday night that the Palestinians should respond to the Israeli demand, Abed Rabbo told Haaretz, "We want to receive a map of the State of Israel which Israel wants us to accept." 'If the map will be based on the 1967 borders and will not include our land, our houses and East Jerusalem, we will be willing to recognize Israel according to the formulation of the government within the hour,' added Rabbo."
Arabs seek pre-1967 borders to weaken and dissolve Israel.

A prominent Israeli politician said, according to Ruthfully Yours: "so long as Israel is not pushed back to her 1967 borders there is no way to get rid of Israel. This explains the vehemence with which the Syrians and others want Israel to return to the 1967 lines. They want this not to live in peace with Israel but to recreate the situation that existed before 1967 and reverse the course of history. The weakness that Israel would project to the Arab world would be such that … instability would be invited... We must be able to defend ourselves and the ability to guarantee our defense has much to do with not returning to the 1967 lines. The Arabs realize this. It is essential that we find a solution that does not lead us to these old lines.'"[4]
Coordinated Arab attack unlikely; pre-1967 borders fine.

The Middle East, and the world more generally, is a far different place than it was in 1967. There is a significantly smaller risk that Arab states will gang up in a conventional war against Israel. This owes significantly to the fact that Israel is much more powerful militarily, Arab states are less powerful relatively, and the military alliances and dynamics in the region tend to favor Israel more. All of this means that maintaining a buffer in Israel, with the post-1967 borders, for the sake of defending against a collective Arab assault is highly unreasonable. Israel does not need this buffer. It can return to its pre-1967 borders.
Territory taken during 1967 war was taken from palestinians.

If Israel was to return to its pre-1967 borders, it would have to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, both territories that it took it from the Palestinians, whom were not fighting the Israelis in the war. All territory won during wartime (and stolen from defenseless civilians) is illegitimate annexation, illegal under international law. The UN "moaned" because the Israelis were killing innocent civilians and acting as though International law/the Geneva Conventions were beneath them.
Success in 1967 war shows defensibility of pre-1967 borders.

Israel won the 1967 war, demonstrating that despite a major coordinated Arab attack on Israel, it could defend its pre-1967 borders adequately. This puts the lie to the central argument that the pre-1967 borders are indefensible. They defended them before under extremely hostile conditions; they can defend them again now under less conventionally threatening conditions, with a greater conventional military capacity to wage a defense, and with the unwavering support of the United States.
Israel had right to claim minimal territory to ensure security.

As is explained in the below section, the minimal slivers of territory that Israel claimed and that it seeks to maintain through a peace settlement [ie, after returning 90% of the pre-1967 territory], is very important to its national security as it offers a buffer against future Arab wars of aggression. For this critical purpose of national survival, the annexed land serves a legally legitimate purpose, especially considering that the Arab wars of aggression were what caused the annexation of the land in the first place. In such circumstances, a nation that won a defensive war has a right to set terms to ensure against future wars of aggression.
Pre-1967 borders would be too insecure and dangerous

Ehud Olmert: "We can never totally return to the indefensible pre-1967 borders, ... We simply cannot afford to make Israel [9 miles] wide again at its center. We can't allow the Palestinians to be a couple [miles] from [Tel Aviv's] Ben Gurion Airport in the age of shoulder-fire missiles with the capacity to shoot down jumbo jets. But that doesn't mean we must remain in every corner of the West Bank or in Gaza, where fewer than 10,000 Jews, living next to 1.3 million Palestinians, have been protected by twice as many soldiers."[2]
Pre-1967 borders not a recipe for peace but more hostilities.

Kenneth Levin. "Peace Now: A 30-Year Fraud." FrontPageMagazine.com. September 5th, 2008: "The American ambassador to the UN at the time concurred, pointing out that 'Israel's prior frontiers had proved to be notably insecure.' And President Lyndon Johnson, shortly after the war, declared that Israel's return to its former lines would be 'not a prescription for peace but for renewed hostilities.' Johnson advocated new 'recognized boundaries' that would provide "security against terror, destruction, and war.'"
Fairness Doctrine wrongly sees "two sides" to every issue

Barbara Comstock & Lanny J. Davis. "What’s Fair Is Fair. And fair is not the 'Fairness Doctrine.'". National Review Online. 20 Oct. 2008 - "as for the idea of hearing from “both sides” of an issue — who assumes there are just two sides? If any two or three people could disagree as to how many sides of an issue exist — as we are sure we would — can you imagine government bureaucrats deciding first, how many sides of an issue there might be and second, how much “fair and balanced” speech each and every side would be allocated?"
Free speech requires boundaries, such as Fairness Doctrine

"TV View; Why the Fairness Doctrine is Still Important". New York Times. 15 Sept. 1985 - "The Fairness Doctrine may be only a standard, and it may not often be enforced. But it does recognize that while speech may be free, it may not always be unbridled. Enlightened public discourse demands a sense of boundaries. Mere possession of a radio or television station does not mean the owner has a sense of boundaries; it means only that he has sufficient money to buy the station."