Yes:

Guantanamo Bay: the only United States Naval base in a country with which we do not maintain diplomatic relations, as well as the only naval base where we detain and torture prisoners.

Traditional prisons in the US do not torture their detainees; in fact, they treat them quite well. The prisoners receive free health care, three balanced meals a day, clothing, a roof over their head and a fairly nice bed. That’s better than almost any other prison system in the world. If the former leaders of terrorist organizations (now held at Guantanamo) did not treat their own prisoners with decency, why should we treat them with any respect or decency now?

The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are our prisoners of war. They are suspected of commiting acts of terrorism against our country and should be treated as terrorists. We should treat them with the same respect they gave us or their own prisoners.

Prison is supposed to be a form of punishment and the amount of punishment should be dependent on the degree of the crime they committed. If they participated in terrorizing our country they do not deserve to be treated with any respect. In many cases, our military needs information out of the detainees, information which they are unwilling to give up. However, torturing, both mentally and physically, encourages them to cooperate more. In times of crisis when invaluable information becomes a matter of life or death, torture can be the fastest and surest form of obtaining information.

Part of the reason these prisoners were detained at Guantanamo Bay was because they were not US citizens. To avoid cases of the prisoners pleading asylum or attempting to gain citizenship through any means, the prisoners are kept off US soil. Because they are not US citizens, they are not entitled to the same treatment that we give US prisoners.

If we need information from the detainees or if they are not cooperating, torture is a forceful form of encouragement to turn to and should only be used when necessary, but it should be an option.

No:

We fight a different war today than any we have ever fought. We fight with a faceless enemy that battles for no country and no goal other than destruction. Motivated by a twisted interpretation of an ancient and venerated religion, they kill for pride and some eternal glory they believe will come to their sick, demented souls.

From the moment we all mourned the thousands of citizens who died in those flaming towers, the American people have maintained the moral high ground in this war. We claim to fight this war on terrorism for the values of democracy, for equality and for freedom. As a result, we cannot afford to abandon those values we claim to be fighting for simply because valid intelligence has great value for the war effort.

The Bush administration claims that situations where an interrogator has a very limited time to get information that could save American lives necessitates a slackening of standards. As a result, they are currently lobbying against John McCain’s bill to ban “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques, saying that it would tie their hands in the War on Terror.

However, such isolated situations do not require a change in our long standing policy toward prisoner abuse. We must stand by such standards, because without them, we lose our vital upper hand in this war on terror—that we are different from our enemy.

Furthermore, when under torture’s influence, a prisoner will be willing to say anything—regardless of its veracity—to end their suffering. Torture, rather than providing reliable intelligence, would most likely produce false information that would lead our nation astray in its search for its faceless, hidden enemies.

We cannot risk our country’s honor to prevail in this war of ideals. In a war of ideals, you need more than battlefield victories to win.

How can we claim that our soldiers are entitled to just and humane treatment if we do not extend the same courtesy to our enemies? Now is the time to show what America is fighting for: the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and most of all, freedom from fear, not the ruthless exploitation of it.