Rhetorical Analysis Of Torture Myth '

“The My Lai Massacre: A Military Crime of Obedience” is an article written by Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, that chronicles the story of the My Lai Massacre of 1968 and the resulting investigation. The article also contains the author's opinions on the military’s stance on following orders, specifically following orders that could be considered illegal. This is also discussed in Marianne Szegedy-Madzak’s “The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism”. In the article she discusses how guards will torture prisoners, because it is excused as a stress-relief tool, and were even congratulated by superiors for their actions. The torturers justified their actions because they believed they were helping the real interrogators out.

Imagine living life in fear of being hanged or burned to death on accusation of witchcraft. This was the reality for countless men and women alike, during the Witch Trials of the mid-1600s. One such person was a homeless woman named Sarah Good. Good was considered a burden to society, therefore accused of witchcraft and sentenced to be hanged. Although she was pardoned until the birth of her child, that same child perished in prison before her execution (Jobe). This case is one of the hundreds to occur during the time of the Witch Trials. Numerous accounts of torture and death are recorded in American history, with these heinous crimes being committed on the exact soil we walk on every day. Based on the evidence used against the supposed witches,

McCain states” The effects of most beatings heal. The memory of an execution will haunt someone for a very long time and damage his or her psyche in ways that may never heal”. (McCain). McCain also says” Many of many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment and few of them unto death” (McCain). These two examples are affective because readers can only try to imagine what McCain and his solders went through. McCain is correct when he means it does not matter how many times someone can hit or torture a soldier, but seeing soldiers apart of the squadron getting executed will harm the mind forever. Levin’s essay has some examples that may create an emotional bond. Levin’s article states “I’m sorry, you’ll have to die in agony, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to …” (Levin). Levin has some guilt for the American soldiers because they were tortured. But Levin does not have feelings for captured enemies during war that they may suffer in order to get information. Levin has no personal experience with war or being tortured. If Levin had one personal experience with being captured prisoner than his point of view would change dramatically and

In the novel “1984” by George Orwell, the Inner Party uses cruelty in a politically and socially effective way by using methods such as torture, starvation, imprisonment, and room 101 as crucial motivation for those being tortured to not only confess but repent of their sins against the party. Furthermore, the use of cruelty by the Inner Party unveils both the victim and perpetrator’s inner conscience.

Krauthammer’s main arguments to justify torture centers on the ticking-bomb scenario, which occurs when the interrogator only has a few minutes to find out the location of an attack or the place of the bomb (Moser et al. 2016). Krauthammer argues that there is no

Michael Levin’s “The Case for Torture” is the first article up for discussion. Overall Levin outclasses his peers in terms of writing, argumentation, and rhetoric. First off he utilizes a plethora of rhetorical devices. His essay contains anadiplosis, alliteration, hypophora, parallelism among other devices. For example, an effective use of anadiplosis resides in paragraph seven: “I am not advocating torture as punishment. Punishment is addressed to deed irrevocably past.” By ending one sentence with the word

Levin provides life threatening situations to speak out to those who are more strongly opinionated. In this instance Levin states that a terrorist has placed a bomb on an Island and is about to detonate it. The only way to prevent the detonation of the device is adherence to the demands that the terrorist provides (Levin 359). While analyzing the viewpoint and the tone of the writer, it is clear that he is afraid failure to follow the demands of the criminal would lead to the loss of many lives. He affirms that in his personal beliefs this case falls under the jurisdiction to torture such criminals, since it seems to be the only way to save the lives of the innocent. The author included these situations to appeal to emotion. This draws a broader audience to convince that his argument is

Levin uses many hyperbolic situations that he uses to explain when and why torture would be acceptable. Within these hyperbolic situations he makes a very strong appeal to Pathos. In one of Levin’s hyperboles he says (1982) “Suppose a terrorist group kidnapped a newborn baby from a hospital.” By using this hyperbole he gets a lot of pathos within his argument and gains

“The case for torture” happens to be a notable work of Michael Levin, a philosophy professor of City University of New York. In many of his works, Levin has emphasized on philosophical aspects associated with science, logic and language. In the essay “The case for torture” the author tried to examine various circumstances to come to a conclusion that would indicate whether torture can be perceived as “just” in certain cases.

The word terrorist attaches to every part of this essay so that the reader will view them in a negative light and become persuaded to believe that torture is a necessary action to perform on them (terrorists). The word innocent also attaches to every part of this essay to make the reader become a defender to those “who never asked to be in danger”. This word (innocent) also connects with the word baby because whenever a person thinks about a baby the adjectives that are associated with it are helpless, unknowing, innocent, and unaware to the danger that surrounds them. This connection is made because the one thing any (moral) human being would care about over their own self would be their children. Levin uses this connection so that it is very relatable to the audience’s everyday life and the emotional appeal is able to have more influence since it is a scenario any

What evidence is being given? This author agrees that torture should be used because in war we have dropped bombs on innocent people that have either killed or left children, woman, and good men in critical condition, which is close to being torture. In the texts he says," There is no escaping the fact that whenever we drop bombs, we drop them with knowledge that some number of children will be blinded, disemboweled, paralyzed, orphaned, and killed by them". C. Fried and was against torture, he explains that Washington said to treat the captured in battle with humanity so they won't have a reason to complain that we were hurting people like those in the British army. He is stating that torture should be allowed with rules instead of just torturing somebody to the extreme for some information. In the text it says, " We know, for example, if Sheikh Khalid Mohammed, a very high value detainee, was subjected to waterboarding. That is, he was placed on a board, his head was put into the water, near drowning experiences were inflicted on

Dershowitz argues that there are two ways to deal with a ticking bomb terrorist, besides doing nothing and letting innocent people die. These options include continuing to torture behind closed door or to utilize torture and make this information open to the

The influence of the media makes people believe everything on television, which tarnishes the credibility of the U.S. government, its military and national security. Communication has been part of human life since the ancient Mesopotamia; it 's what people use to reach anyone and everywhere. Just like humans, communication has evolved throughout the time, from cave drawings to high technology wireless devices. Nowadays, the biggest fraction of communication is what is now called the media; it 's everywhere and on everyone. 24, just like any other television shows, utilize this apparatus to its full extent to gain their expected results; more viewership, and higher ratings. The depiction of torture as the only form of interrogation hurts the

Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie. "Erroneous Assumptions: Popular Belief in the Effectiveness of Torture Interrogation." Peace & Conflict 13.4 (2007): 429-435. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Feb. 2016. As this article mentions many people do believe that torture works as nobody could resist the physical and mental torture people are put through. In reality most successful cases have been done by psychology experts using other methods. They used human knowledge and applied it to the interrogation.

Notwithstanding, Hitchens illustrates waterboarding in the story in order to show in depth the pain and details of the process. Hitchens states, “Arms already lost to me, I wasn’t able to flail as I was pushed onto a sloping board and positioned with my head lower than my heart (Hitchens 617).” The author uses this to create an image to the audience of the torture he went through while waterboarding. Hitchens uses imagery in order for the audience to get a realistic feel of the agony and torture that waterboarding really is. Moreover, Hitchens refers to a metaphor by Abraham Lincoln that compares slavery to the treatment of waterboarding “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong (Hitchens 620-621).” Slavery was considered one of the most torturous times in the south resulting in many deaths and injuries inflicted among African Americans as punishment. The author argues that waterboarding is just as torturous as slavery and that if waterboarding is not torture then there is no such thing as torture. Hitchens uses this metaphor to create a comparison between slavery and waterboarding and to support his argument of waterboarding is torture. Throughout the story, Hitchens uses a passionate tone while describing other Americans viewpoints of the practice. In “Believe Me, Its Torture”, Hitchens uses Mr. Malcom Nance as a witness and describes him as a cold-hearted human being. Mr. Nance has played a part in the attacks of al Qaeda since the early 1990s and Hitchens states the many points that Mr. Nance makes to persuade anyone to believe waterboarding is torture. The author brings in special forces to argue that waterboarding is a punishment used for special forces not U.S. citizens. Accordingly, Hitchens demonstrates imagery, metaphors, and tone to persuade the audience waterboarding is indeed