Thinking about torture is a very present issue for me since I am planning on commissioning into the military. Personally, I am resolutely of the opinion that torture is not an effective method of obtaining critical information from prisoners. Many times over it has been shown that people will just say what they have to so that they stop getting tortured. There have also been numerous instances in the past ages of torture being used as a method just to get somebody to confess to a crime that they may have not actually committed.

You have to ask yourself, what would it be like to be strapped down to a table with a rag over your face and water poured over your mouth? It is completely impossible for anybody that has not had it done to them to actually imagine the experience. But I’ve had an MRI and even that was pretty bad — being restrained and put into a closed tube — and that was to help me! People who have been waterboarded say that it is the worst thing that they have ever had to do in their lives.

It is too easy to look at someone as simply an enemy. I know many friends that when asked about using torture would respond with something like “well they would do it to us, so the sob deserves it I guess.” But this kind of Tit for Tat thinking is precisely what allows torture to continue to be used in militaries. Often times it is not even for information, but for pure retribution.

Aside from all of this, I think that the most striking point made in the talk was that when torture is discussed in the political realm it is often projected purely hypothetically and cerebrally. “Does it work?” I think that a very valid point that he brought up, however, is that torture should not be an issue that is allowed to be thought of simply as a tool which happens to be not such a pleasant one to use. The other implications and ramifications of using torture should be thought about certainly before, and probably in place of, the logical and practical application side of torture methods.