torture

Is Torture Reliable or Humane?
Imagine being forced into confession with your head down, and blood rushing to your brain. Picture the struggle of being held down and defenseless, against your will. Imagine having a thick towel pressed firmly over your face and continuous water being poured on the towel as you helplessly gasp for air simulating the effect of drowning. Imagine being bound and thrown into the ocean with a ‘weight’ that pulls you in only one direction: down to the bottom of the ocean floor. Do you think this kind of action is right to do to a criminal or let alone a human?

Torture is the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment in order to force them to do or confess something. History has changed from uncivilized torture techniques to civilized torture and then back again. There has been crucial maltreatment on prisoners and suspected criminals. The crucifixion of Christ by the Romans is a huge example of torture. The Romans beat and whipped Christ, pinned his hands and feet with needles onto a wooden cross, and put a thorny crown around his head. Back then, even great thinkers defended torture saying it was protecting civilization, and bringing control to the people. They had no limit to who they were torturing. The Romans began to create laws allowing only certain subjects and crimes that could entail torture, but as time passed they added more subjects to the availability of torture. Christianity later became the commanding force and went against all the torture laws, and fought hard to change the way torture was executed. Once the September 11 attack happened, people forgot about human rights because they were fearful of another attack, so they continued the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.

Torture was used because people believed it to be an effective way to extract information from a captive suspect. The United States police mentality and parents cause children to think that torture is justifiable. When 9/11 happened the United States became defensive and feared the thought of another terrorist attack. We were willing to do anything to find out who the culprit was. We wanted to feel like we had national security and we needed someone to blame, so if torture techniques were the solution, we were willing to do so. Blinded by the tragedy that tools place, we were not using our intelligence. The United States was taking action based on fear and revenge, torturing suspects, and affiliates. The result from this will cause the safety of the nation to be at a higher risk of an attack. The media is another factor to the use of torture. Jane Mayer wrote in her article "Whatever it Takes" about a TV show called "24". 24 was a television show that was all about torture, but instead of showing how torture was wrong, the show glamorized it. The show displays torture as being a useful tactic to make people talk and almost all the people that watch the show get conned into thinking the same way. The sad part of the story is that even children watched the show 24: “The kids see it, any say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about 24’” (261). The show was convincing and one sided, being torture is justifiable and effective, that people believed it was true, but Jane disagreed with it. She thinks that it only works in some cases, but there are down sides to using torture, such as misguided information. Torture is displayed widely around the world in a positive way, but they do not see the negative effects of using torture techniques to solve problems.

Torture can cause long term effects on torture subjects. Physical and mental actions can harm a person for the rest of there life. Most survivors of torture suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome - a severe anxiety disorder. In David Masci article "Should it be used to interrogate suspected terrorist?” he interviewed a women named Dianna Ortiz that is a survivor of torture tactics. Dianna suffered mentally from the torture...