Waterboarding should be prohibited.

Waterboarding should be used when innocent lives are at stake in a ticking time bomb problem situation. Suppose terrorists have hidden a nuclear bomb somewhere in New York City. One of the terrorists is detained and there is good reason to believe he knows where the bomb is located. The objective is to obtain the information from him in time to stop the detonation. I claim that it would be immoral not to use waterboarding under those circumstances, because the potential is for saving many innocent lives, and he worst case for the detainee is that he is terrorized temporarily, but not permanently harmed. A frequent debate topic is whether it is morally justified to kill one innocent person to save the lives of many others. That's debatable. However, our question is whether it is justified to subject a terrorist to temporary discomfort to save the lives of many citizens. The case of a nuclear weapon is extreme, but it is a valid hypothetical to demonstrate the principle. Waterboarding was actually used by the CIA only three times. In one case, a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was uncovered and prevented. The conditions for using waterboarding ought to be as follows: 1. It is to be only used by trained CIA interrogators, never by the military or the police. 2. The detainee must be certified by an attending physician as unlikely to suffer permanent harm. 3. The objective is to get information that will save lives. 4. Either the President or a Judge appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate must issue a warrant based upon a showing probable cause that the detainee knows the information sought and it is probable that multiple lives are at stake. Pro objects that waterboarding is so effective that people will confess to anything. However, a confession is never sought. Only information is sought and it is verifiable, because it is used to prevent the "ticking time bomb." Requiring a warrant by the President or the judiciary prevents indiscriminate use without good reason. Waterboarding unquestionably produces time-critical information needed to save lives, and that information could not be obtained by other means. Waterboarding of Kalid Sheik Muhammad "— led to the discovery- of a KSM plot, the "Second Wave," "to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airline into" a building in Los Angeles," In the three cases that waterboarding was used on terrorists, Al Qaida members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, it always worked and the information obtained was verified. [1. http://directorblue.blogspot.com...] Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT), and ultimately waterboarding (in the three cases): "produced 3,000 of the 6,000 critical counter-terror intelligence reports only after normal techniques had proved fruitless; used on Zubaydah revealed KSM's identity as a mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks; KSM ratted out a number of mass-murderers including Hambali; Hambali's brother ratted out a cell bent on "9/11 Wave 2" on the West Coast; Zubaydah also revealed Padilla and his plan to detonate a simplistic dirty bomb in Washington, DC" [1] Former CIA operative John Kiriakou also told CNN: "The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions. ... All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique. ... The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said. ... The CIA was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said." http://articles.cnn.com... Author Marc Theisen independently verified Kiriakou's claims, "And in Courting Disaster, I meticulously document the evidence for the efficacy of the CIA interrogation program — based not on Kirakou's claims, but on the testimony of the actual interrogators, interviews with top CIA and other intelligence officials, the evidence presented in the CIA inspector general's report, and other top-secret documents declassified by the Obama administration." http://www.nationalreview.com... The alternative to waterboarding is rendition. The policy of the Clinton Administration was to turn over detainees to other countries [http://www.fas.org...] who would use torture to extract information. The Bush Administration changed the policy to use EIT, including waterboarding in the extreme, in order to improve the reliability of the information being obtained by poorly trained foreign interrogators, and also to prevent the severe torture used. The Obama Administration has returned to a policy of rendition. http://www.telegraph.co.uk... Waterboarding is certainly harsh, but it produces no lasting physical harm or serious mental harm. It is used in the training of CIA operatives and special forces personnel. A fair number of journalists have volunteered to be waterboarded, so they can write about the experience. Those in include Kaj Larsen http://www.npr.org... and Christopher Hitchins http://www.huffingtonpost.com.... They report a horrible experience, but they would not have volunteered if they thought it would seriously injure them, and it did not. How many other forms of "torture" has a list of journalists volunteering for it? I know of none. Waterboarding should only be used in extreme circumstances of a "ticking time bomb" that threatens many lives, and then only under warrant and by trained CIA interrogators. It is justified by saving lives. It would be immoral not to use the technique if that is the only hope to save the victims. Famed liberal lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz supports the morality of using waterboarding under presidential warrant. He says, "If the president of the United States thinks it's absolutely essential to defend the lives of thousands of people, he ought to be on the line. He ought to have to sign a torture warrant ..." http://www.npr.org... The resolution is negated.