After reading all four articles, the biggest issue I had was with the article by Bagaric. The reason I find it difficult to agree with him lies in his definition of torture. He writes that “Torture is permissible where the evidence suggests that this is the only means, due to the immediacy of the situation, to save the life of an innocent person.” He continues to argue that self-defense makes torture permissible. The reason I find this so difficult to agree with is because there is a clear difference between self-defense and torture. I believe that torture is inflicting any kind of emotional or physical distress on someone for no apparent reason for a prolonged period of time.  If someone has a gun pointed to your head, I think that a person has the right to do whatever is necessary, be it physical violence or another means, to get the gun away from the shooter. I find the disparity between my understanding of torture and the definition Bagaric provides very difficult to circumnavigate.

Torture is also used to obtain information necessary to save lives. In the article by Arar, he writes of the situation in which a Lebanese-German man was kidnapped and subsequently tortured because he was thought to have knowledge the CIA wanted. It turns out that he was not the person they needed and was tortured for five months for no reason without any sort of retribution from the United States. Situations like these come from suspicion and end causing unnecessary pain to an innocent person. Torture is not an effective method of obtaining information because of the likelihood of false intelligence. A person who is being tortured would say just about anything to make it stop. Even if they don’t know what is being asked of them and they are being pushed to their breaking point, a person would be likely to say anything. Not only is torture inhumane, often times it is not entirely warranted.