While watching Zero Dark Thirty you will see a tremendous amount of torture. It's really half of the movie. A personal favorite of the CIA seems to be the placement of a towel upon the face of the victim - whereupon a bucket of water is poured over the towel to simulate the effect of drowning. Remarkably, despite such gruesome punishment, little information is gleaned from those in American custody. Torture during the years following 9/11 seems to have been at its most extensive use in United States history. Coupled with the fact that the enemy is much more radical in its beliefs and far more willing to die for those beliefs rather than soldiers in previous wars, little other than extreme torture tends to get information.
An ethical dilemma then emerges around the extent to which torture should be used to extract information from people with intelligence key to preventing civilian casualties. For instance, in Zero Dark Thirty, Maya could not have ascertained that Abu Ahmed was a personal courier to Osama Bin-Laden without the use of violence, fear tactics, and humiliation. The movie even directly the addresses the ethical issue of torture when Maya watches the president on TV declare that detainee torture would come to end. However, we as the viewers know that torture is the only way to ensure key intelligence can be confirmed across multiple detained witnesses since they could otherwise lie.
The torture tactics used were cruel, and not as useful as people thought they would actually be. I don't think simulating the effect of drowning, along with any other tactic can ever be justified.
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