Torture: If It Hurts, Its Still Not Torture - Essay Example

Performing “water-boarding” on a person simulates the sensation of drowning. Imagine being held down while someone holds your mouth closed and another person pours water down your nose. At the Guantanamo prison, water-boarding was performed on dozens of separate occasions on the same victim in order to extract information. First, it doesn’t work. If a person being tortured talks they are only saying whatever they think their captor wants to hear. Secondly and most important is the human factor.

Water-boarding is against the rules of the Geneva Convention. In addition, the U.S. tried, convicted and hung Japanese soldiers accused of water-boarding Americans. How much clearer can it be than that be, especially for Americans?Just because something hurts does not make it torture unless it’s understood that we are using the common definition of torture then yes, it does. If a person is being “hurt” on a sustained basis against their will then any reasonable person, including me, would judge it to be torture.

What’s bothersome is that there are people who try to justify, if only to themselves, that tactics such as water-boarding should not be considered torture but “enhance interrogation” techniques therefore morally excusable. It’s not.