Argumentative Essay On Torture

Of course, even after all that has been learned about torture and its impact on human lives and our reputation around the world, there are still those proponents of torture who claim it to be an effective means of obtaining information. In 2014, just three years ago, the psychologist and architect of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, James Mitchell, gave an in-depth interview with the Guardian Newspaper, breaking a seven-year long silence on the issue. Mitchell took exception to a newly released committe report that “found that the interrogation techniques devised by Mitchell. . . were far more brutal than disclosed at the time, and did not yield useful intelligence. These included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in a box and being slammed into walls”(Leopold). Mitchell
All of these [CIA] directors were wrong? All of the people who were using the intel to go get people were wrong? And 10 years later a Senate staffer was able to put it together and finally there’s clarity? I am just highly skeptical that that’s the truth”(Leopold). Mitchell also flatly denied any abuse of prisoners and claims that his enhanced interrogation methods did work. Opponents of torture as well as the Senate report tell a different story. “The report finds that CIA detainees subjected to what were then called “enhanced interrogation techniques” either produced no intelligence, or they “fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence”(Borger). The report went on to claim that information gathered by other means was much more reliable and produced better intelligence. “Defenders of waterboarding, which was declared to be torture by the Obama administration, claimed it led to concrete results”(Borger). Yet the Senate report denied that claiming “that all the useful intelligence came from traditional non-violent questioning, and that his later waterboarding produced nothing further of