by Zachary Maichuk

Created on: May 31, 2009   Last Updated: June 02, 2009

The appropriateness of torture has been an issue that has returned to the national discourse since we first began our war on terror. With the change of presidential administration, which has been accompanied by a new willingness to open the issue for debate, the discussion has become heated, with sides drawing lines in the sand. One of the central arguments used to defend the use of torture is its necessity as an interrogation technique. This argument, however, is fallacious for a number of reasons. And once examined, it becomes obvious that not only is torture not an acceptable form of torture, but it is far darker and more disturbing that we are being lead to believe.

To begin, it needs to be understood that the primary purpose of torture is not obtaining information. If this were the primary purpose, that would be the only reason torture gets used. Instead, torture is also used to establish dominance, quell dissent, obtain politically expedient false confession, terrorize a populace, or just satisfy an urge for sadistic pleasure. Torture is a systemic application of extreme psychological or physical distress that includes water boarding, sleep deprivation, exposure to loud music, restraint in uncomfortable postures, humiliation, beatings, mutilation, threat of death, rape, or the forced watching of someone else being beaten, mutilated, raped, or killed. The interrogation aspect of torture is secondary, and only comes into play once the person has been tortured sufficiently that they will say what they need to in order to make the torture stop. The interrogation, then, is a secondary product, not the primary goal of the torturer. The primary goal is to abuse and break another human being.

The argument has been made that the brutality of torture is a necessary evil, that there are circumstances where there may be such an immediate need for information that torture is justified. The problem with that argument is that the current non-torture interrogation techniques used by government organizations such as the FBI provide information with equivalent, if not superior, results. The use of such conventional interrogation have been proven to be successful in the dreaded "ticking time bomb" scenarios, such as the foiling of the NYC millennial bomb plot back in 2000. In addition, the act of torture can actually hinder the investigation. When FBI interrogators were making headway with detainees in Guantanamo Bay, they were called off and replaced by CIA interrogators

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