Water Boarding is an act of torture and is immoral.

I have presented my case as plainly as possible and provided links and sources to back up my definitions as well as my arguments. My opponent has ridiculed my sources without providing any of his own apart from vague references to Aristotle and Machiavelli. The only source my opponent seems to think worthy of crediting is Ragnar Rahl. To humour my opponent I have attempted to argue within his own interpretation of morality as well as within the established one. He has not shown me the same courtesy and simply dismisses outright the standard definition of morality. I can only assume this is because he accepts that water-boarding is immoral under standardly applied definitions. My opponent has flexed his intellectual muscle, displaying his impressive vocabulary and using obscure Latin (or is it Greek) terms but has not really argued much about water boarding. He has attacked conventions as fallacy without explaining why and also seems to imply that I am made of straw. Unless my opponent offers some solid arguments, backed up by real evidence, then I urge readers to vote Pro. My opponent accepts that water boarding is torture. Since my opponent seems to have conceded that torture is immoral by conventionally held values, I will focus for the rest of this final round on proving it to be 'immoral' under my opponent's unusual 'self-preservation' model. From the last round: Me:"We also see many examples of the counter-productivity of torture" My opponent:"No we do not. We see unsupported possibility, as opposed to the possibility that it saves lives, a possibility supported by the CIA officials who have actual experience in the matter. " I agree with my opponent that perhaps the best testimony comes from those who have carried it out: "NEW YORK—Fifteen former interrogators and intelligence officials with more than 350 years collective field experience have declared that torture is an "unlawful, ineffective and counterproductive" way to gather intelligence, in a statement of principles released today. " . http://www.humanrightsfirst.org... "listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information. " . http://www.washingtonpost.com... "Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice. He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises. Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique – period". . http://www.independent.co.uk... Just three examples of those who have carried out water boarding agreeing that it is torture, immoral (standard definition) and ineffective (Immoral to Ragnar). And what is official policy? aside from the Geneva convention etc? : "the current U. S. Army Field Manual recognizes that torture and inhuman treatment is ineffective, stating that "Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. " . http://blogs.amnestyusa.org... As my opponents idea of morality is focused on the self let us further examine the personal impact of carrying out torture, military and government personal are unlikely to discuss this sort of thing publicly but in the confidentiality of a doctor's office etc: "The guards at the Guantï¿½namo Bay prison camp are the "overlooked victims" of America's controversial detention facility in Cuba, according to a psychiatrist who has treated some of them. .. .. patient ('Mr H') is a national guardsman in his early 40s who was sent to Guantï¿½namo in the first months of its operation, when prisoners captured in Afghanistan were beginning to flood into the camp. Mr H reported that he found conditions at the camp extremely disturbing. For example, in the first month two detainees and two prison guards committed suicide. .. .the things his superiors required him to do to them had a severe psychological impact on Mr H. " . http://www.guardian.co.uk... My opponent claims that water boarding has been used three times to positive effect. It does not take much of a stretch of imagination to suppose that it may well have been carried out many more times with less effective results and that these instances remain classified information. As my opponent makes no references I cannot research these cases individually but I did find evidence that the effectiveness of at least one of them was in dispute: "CIA officials initially believed Zubaida was an al-Qaida ringleader and that information he divulged after being water-boarded would prove crucial to preventing terrorist attacks. Both assumptions were wrong. Zubaida wasn't even an official member of al-Qaida. While he did possess some very useful information about al-Qaida's membership, most of it was obtained before he was water-boarded. The leads he provided later were almost all dead ends that wasted agents' valuable time and resources. The paper says that Zubaida might now prove to be a thorny legal issue for the White House. " . http://www.slate.com... "not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. " . http://www.washingtonpost.com... So there we have it; water boarding is torture and torture is immoral no matter how skewed your personal moral compass may be. Thankyou.