Is the United States justified in torturing terrorist suspects.

Hi everyone! Hope to have an awesome debate. Since my opponent fails to debate in LD style, I am forced to drop the style of the debate and accept this freeform debate. I accept my opponent's restrictions on the definition of torture. And for those of you guys who are not familiar with the United Nations Convention against Torture, I offer the following extract. "Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions." - United Nations Convention against Torture (for further reading- http://www.hrweb.org...) First, to refute all my opponents' arguments. From my opponent's case: "In a situation where it is necessary to kill one person in order to save many, I assert it is logical and right to do so." My response: The wording of the argument will always lead to my opponents conclusion, because of the "NECESSARY" that is present in the sentence. Without rewording, this is abusive and should not be considered. My opponent could present this example as: In a situation, where the murder of one person might save the lives of many, it is logical and right to kill the human being. Also, my opponent must provide a warrant for his reasoning. From my opponent's case: "There have existed, and will exist in the future, occasions where information is needed from a person in order to save lives. If it is possible to extract this information from this person, it is logical and right that it should be extracted. If the only available method is torture, then so be it." My Response: My opponent focuses on a situation where the suspect is known to have information that is vital for national security. My opponent does not account for the following fact: not everyone the US is holding/torturing is known/proven to have this kind of information or even belong to an extremist group. The United States has rarely produced viable results. "In all the years you've been doing this (torturing), how often can you say that we've produced truly legitimate intelligence? Once? Twice? Ten times? Give me a statistic; give me a number. Give me a pie chart, I love pie charts. Anything, anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies." -Douglas Freeman in the movie "Rendition" speaking about his experiences as an observer in torture. I CHALLENGE MY OPPONENT TO PRESENT ONE CASE WHERE ADMITTED TORTURE THAT WAS SANCTIONED BY THE US HAS RESULTED IN VIABLE EVIDENCE THAT CAN JUSTIFY THE ACTIONS TAKEN BY THE US!!! GIVE ME A PIE CHART!!! From my opponent's case: You can also, of course, view this subject emotively. Take on one side of a balance the sum of the years of despair, loss and loneliness that will be felt by the families and friends of the victims, if the information wasn't extracted. Put on the other side a few hours of pain felt by an individual. In such circumstances it is ethical to torture." My Response: FEW HOURS??? These victims are put through hopeless years of confinement and deprivation of their human rights. The family might deal with the loss of a loved one. On the other hand, the innocent victims also lose their loved ones on top of their life; will to live, inherent human dignity, etc. From my opponent's case: "I am asserting that the United States is justified in torturing terrorist suspects under these circumstances. I abhor the idea of the United States ritualizing this activity. I also abhor the idea of using torture as anything other than a tool to gain information - it should never be used for retribution or to make the torturers feel superior." My response: Accepting torture will eventually ritualize it and will lead to its use as a retributive tool. It is impossible to prevent this from happening. I CHALLENGE MY OPPONENT TO PROVE THAT GOVERNMENT SANCTIONED TORTURE WILL ONLY BE USED FOR THE INTERESTS OF THE US!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On to My Case Torture is unfair, unethical, not to mention unconstitutional. I present the following points as to why the United States is not justified in its actions concerning torture. 1. How do we justify the torture and holding of suspects? Can we ignore "Innocent until proven guilty" when we find it more convenient. 2. Should the US ignore important federal documents and existing signed and ratified documents? A. The US has an obligation to further human rights in the world as stated in the U.S. Code TITLE 22 > CHAPTER 32 > SUBCHAPTER II > Part I > ï¿½ 2304Prev. By torturing innocent victims, we are clearly not promoting human rights. B. During the Bush Administration, the US chose to re-interpret the Geneva Convention Article 4(A) 2. The re-interpretation allowed us to torture and hold terrorist suspects, because the US didn't have to provide the victims with the prisoner of war status. The US has an obligation to follow contracts it has signed. When voting on this issue, please consider the following questions: SHOULD THE US BE ALLOWED TO DENY THE P.O.W. STATUS FROM THE PEOPLE IT HAS CAPTURED? (DO WE NOT CALL IT THE WAR ON TERROR?) SHOULD THE US BE ALLOWED TO IGNORE FEDERAL DOCUMENTS AND TREATIES IT IS OBLIGATED TO FOLLOW WHEN IT PROVES TO BE MORE CONVENIENT? Thanks for accepting the debate. Hope to hear some good rebuttals.