Can Use of Torture Be Justified

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The Use of Torture Can Never Be Justified As a preliminary working definition sufficient for my purposes here, I agree with Michael Davis who describes torture as “the intentional infliction of extreme physical suffering on some non-consenting, defenseless, other person for the purpose of breaking their will, (Michael, Davis, 2005). Thus, a person might have been tortured, even if in fact their will has not been broken; the purpose of the practice of torture is to break the victim’s will, but this purpose does not have to be realized for a process to be an instance of torture. Is The Use of Torture Ever Justified? The question tends to provoke a "yes" or "no" answer. The use of torture is always based on the “TICKING bomb theory.” This theory describes a fictional scenario in which a massive weapon is set to go off, a prisoner in custody is known to have information on the attack that he refuses to give, and U.S. forces are faced with the question of whether to torture the prisoner or to allow untold millions to die. Certainly if millions of lives are at stake, the prisoner in question could be and would be tortured. It would not matter whether or not the practice of torture is illegal, because those doing the torturing would almost certainly be either pardoned or acquitted by jury nullification. When our criminal justice system makes allowances even for justifiable homicide, it is naive to believe that laws against torture would have any significance in a true "ticking bomb" scenario. In every war, information is a weapon. In a “war against terrorism,” where the adversary wears no uniform and hides among the civilian population, information can matter even more. But does that mean that torture can sometimes be justified to
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