Is Waterboarding Wrong?

To start us off I would like to say that in no way does the treatment of prisoners of war by US officials in any way a violation of the just war theory. That thought is not even remotely imaginable. For their actions to violate Just War Theory you would have had to water board the criminals, first of all for an unjust cause. The cause was to find out information that may have lead to saving lives of American soldiers and citizens. 

In the theory of just war the indecent treatment of prisoners is frowned upon. By indecent treatment I mean torture. Water boarding is not torture! The actual definition of water boarding is, “The act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/torture) Rather than causing excruciating pain we are causing fear and discomfort for the party in question. There was no breaking of bones, branding, burning, beating, cutting, dismemberment, electrocution, or soft tissue damage in any way. There were trained medical personnel present in the interrogations of the individuals in case of medical emergency. There are no lasting physical effects from what they did to the POW’s. To say that this was torture would have to change what happened to any other person that is considered torture to another category. This was nothing more than aggressive interrogation. There is nothing in the Just War theory that frown upon Aggressive interrogation. In addition they were not doing this to all of the people that they had locked up in Git mo it was only the high up terrorists that have been convicted and they are sure of guilty. There is no chance they are doing this to someone that knows nothing.

            Should anyone be held criminally responsible for the treatment of these criminals? Of course not! First of all the people who actually did were following orders second of all the people who ordered it were doing it for the good of the country, safely, and did not break any laws. That is if we have the mental capacity to comprehend that this was obviously not torture.

            I personally don’t think that anyone would be held criminally responsible, if they were I do not think that they would be convicted for doing something that was ethically wrong but, for breaking the law. Although if we are all in agreement that this was not torture then there is nothing wrong with this picture.

            In conclusion there was no violation of just war theory and no one should be prosecuted under the premise that water boarding is not torture. Anyone who thinks that water boarding is torture should pick up a history book look at what actual torture is and give it a new name, because compared to the Bloody Eagle, which is considered torture, water boarding is a cake walk.