The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was long been believed to use different types of tortures to administer to prisoners or allegedly terrorist during interrogations. According to different news agencies such as ABC news, the CIA is actually using harsh or even brutal interrogations techniques. This kind of technique can be regarded by some as torture.Torture is a practice by which one person is inflicting pain to another for mere gratification purposes or to display supremacy.
In a stricter sense and as can be seen in the Declaration against torture by the United Nations, ‘torture refers to the act of inflicting physical, emotional and mental pain or suffering to a person with an intention of acquiring relevant information or confession, as a form of punishment or just as a means of intimidation’Under this respect the said interrogation technique administered by the CIA can be considered as a kind of torture. Such act is illegal under the Geneva Convention and the laws of United Nations. However, the government of the United States insist that such actions are legal and necessary in able to obtain information from Terrorist. Also, that such practice is only done in extreme cases.The interrogation practice they use involves attention grab, attention slap, attention belly slap, long time standing, the cold cell and water boarding. Among these, water boarding is the most sophisticated and is highly rendered as harsh.
Water boarding gives the prisoner a sense of being near-death; it gives a feeling of drowning that allegedly leads to confession.People dislike the method because it is believed to lead prisoners to tell what the officers wanted to hear.There are instances wherein the prisoner does not really know anything but he created a story just to escape the torture. Thus, although the use of torture may indeed help gather information, it might as well result to a bad quality interrogation which results to wrong or misleading information.Works CitedJehl, D. and Johnston, D.
C.I.A. Expands Its Inquiry Into Interrogation Tactics. President-bush.
com. 2004. Retrieved on February 27, 2008. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.president-bush.
com/torture-waterboarding.htmlMcCoy, A. The Hidden History of CIA Torture: America's Road to Abu Ghraib. Globalresearc.
ca. 2004. Retrieved on February 27, 2008. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MCC409A.
htmlRoss, B. and Esposito, R. CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described. ABCNews.
com.(2005). Retrieved on February 27, 2008. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866
