Torture Defined

Paper Summary:

The paper defines torture and describes the two types of torture, physical and mental. The paper elucidates on the results of torture having life-long negative emotional and psychological effects. The paper then also describes torture as the utilization or threatened utilization of mind and body altering drugs, or the threat of imminent death or severe physical or mental pain. . The paper concludes that there is ample evidence that there is little if any validity to the use of torture in actually gaining information, or making the world a safer place, in fact in the case of terrorists our own acts of hypocrisy further feed the fire of hatred for the West and all she stands for.

Outline:
Introduction
History of Torture
Support for Torture
Arguments against Torture
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"The work then goes on to describe the utilization or threatened utilization of mind and body altering drugs, the threat of imminent death, or the threat of imminent death or severe physical or mental pain to another. (29) In this message the acknowledgement of the legal and social restrictions of the use of torture is not only implied but demonstratively agreed upon by the preeminent legal body of the United States. It would seem strange then that this nation and others who have taken public stands against the utilization of torture continue to keep it in their own arsenal of tactics for use against those who are perceived as threatening to the nation or the world. In fact in Levinson's introduction it is stated that at the time of the compilation and publish of the work 130 nations had ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which went into force in 1987 some nations and organizations have spoken out individually in addition through national legislation and the ratification of other documents which are to be considered core national and international doctrines and law, and yet torture still occurs on a daily basis, and is condoned and utilized even by those nations that profess through official means to never use or condone it, including but certainly not limited to the US, Great Britain and Israel, all of who have been found in legal arenas to be guilty of it. Levinson even quotes a confessed and convicted torturer as saying that when we as a world stop speaking out against torture in official ways, we as a world will cease to be human. Of coarse this is not to say that rogue nations, terrorists and other political bodies do not also use such tactics, as can be seen in the autobiographical work, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, by Jacobo Timmerman. The work accounts a long ordeal of torture and imprisonment at the hands of the Argentinean government under a totalitarian regime in the 1970s. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Conroy, John. Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture. New York: Knopf, 2000.
• Greenberg, Karen J. The Torture Debate in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Grey, Stephen. Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006.
• Levinson, Sanford. Torture: A Collection. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Timerman, Jacobo. Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. New York: Knopf, 1981.

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