Osama Bin Laden Research Paper

Torture as an Anti-Terrorist Strategy In 2005, the Detainee Treatment act was passed, which banned the military from engaging in torture as well as requiring the International Committee of the Red Cross to have access to prisoners being held by the U.S. government. In June of 2015, Senate voted to expand this law to prevent the military and all other government agencies from using torture during interrogations of prisoners, codifying a ban President Barack Obama issued by executive order shortly after he was sworn in. The use of torture has been a hot topic for the past several years, mainly because of its use by the Bush administration and the intelligence gained through torture eventually leading us to finding Osama Bin Laden. Many try …show more content…
There were no laws in the early 2000’s, like there are now, to hold back the Bush Administration from using EITs (enhanced interrogation) and there were actually some regulations supporting President Bush in his endeavors to find Osama Bin Laden through the use of EITs. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, for example, authorized the President to conduct military tribunals of enemy combatants and to hold them indefinitely without judicial review under the terms of habeas corpus, which is an order to bring a jailed person before a judge or court to find out if that person should really be in jail. It also ruled that, “Testimony coerced through humiliating or degrading treatment would be admissible in the tribunals”. Unfortunately, this didn’t last long because the U.S. Field Manuals on Counterinsurgency and Human Intelligence Collector Operations, released later that same year, which stated that, “no person in the custody or under the control of DOD, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, in accordance with and as defined in U.S. law.” This means, however, that the government had several years where torture was at the height of use before its downward …show more content…
Torture is used entirely to thwart future terrorist attacks. Justification of torture can be examined best in what is known as the “Ticking Time Bomb Scenario”. The ticking time bomb scenario is a thought experiment that has been used in the ethics debate over whether torture can ever be justified. As a thought experiment, there is no need that the scenario be plausible, it need only serve to highlight ethical considerations. The scenario can be formulated as follows: Suppose that a person with knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack, that will kill many people, is in the hands of the authorities and that he will disclose the information needed to prevent the attack only if he is tortured. Should he be tortured? It’s like the phrase, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs”. In a world where terrorists will do anything it takes to kill Americans, shouldn’t Americans be allowed to do anything it takes to protect themselves? This is the reason for EITs, the purpose - to protect the American