Commentary on Milena's Ethical Argument

Okay so, I'm pretty sure i have some very valuable criticisms and suggestions for this paper.

You have such good arguments present in the essay. My concern is, these arguments are not consistent with one another. What i mean is, there are ethical criteria that support different theses. So the first issue at hand is which thesis you want to argue.

The way your paper is set up is like this :

Intro:
- Really good introduction of topic
-gives good currency to the importance of your ethical concern
-demonstrates the controversy

* the potential problem here, however, is that when i finish reading the introduction paragraph I am under the impression that you are trying to convince me that waterboarding is torture. So, as far as i know from the beginning, that is your thesis. Ex. "there is no doubt that the majority of the population would agree that tying someone up....sounds a lot like torture" So now the reader feels that this is where you're going.
but it isn't where you go....
So the next paragraph does this:

-Presents ethical criterion revolving around the "uselessness of enhanced interrogation"- in fact that is your topic sentence so the reader can only assume you are about to argue why this is true.

* the problem here is that arguing this criterion doesn't support your thesis that waterboarding is torture. Look at is this way. You want to convince someone that it's torture so you try to convince them by telling them it doesn't work. You kind of see how it doesn't really apply to your thesis?

I want to make a note though based on the rest of your paper that i strongly suggest your adjust your thesis rather than your ethical criterion because your arguments are wayyyyy solid :)

the next few paragraphs sort of repeat this idea that waterboarding isn't proving to be as effective as the military would hope. So some of these may either be redundant or may require a different direction or point to be made.

Your second ethical criterion is a bit obscure but i feel it is extremely powerful. You state that waterboarding is putting medical professionals into ethical dilemmas. This is great because now you have two solid ethical criteria: 1. waterboarding is a useless tactic, and 2. it compromise the moral integrity of the united states (which you do touch on)

With that being said my suggestion is: Change your thesis to something like : Many argue that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques may or may not fall under the category of torture, but my take on the matter is that these special methods of interrogation present ethical dilemmas that don't even fall within the context of arguments having to do with torture. In fact, waterboarding has been known to fall short when it comes to the accuracy of information acquired and on top of that, the U.S. moral integrity is compromised when dealing with foreign policy type issues that involve interrogation methods.

See this thesis would be good for your arguments because then you have this situation:

Thesis: waterboarding doesn't work; and it makes the us (the country) look bad

ethical criterion#1: it's wrong to inflict pain on someone when we won't even get the information we need

ethical criterion#2: the u.s. stands on convictions of being a role model to the rest of the world and waterboarding is in conflict with this.

BOOM you got yourself an ethical argument.


some more small points: there are some statements that need some backing like "information gathered by the use of waterboarding or any other sort of torture is often useless" find a quote somewhere in some scholarly text that fortifies this knowledge otherwise it sounds like a bold claim that you're making or you can "hedge" the statement and say something like " information gathered by the use of waterboarding or any other sort of torture may not be the accurate information we're looking for every single time"

ALSO : keep the rebuttal. it's so perfect because your counterargument will segue so smoothly into your next ethical criterion


otherwise..... nice job with this,.... your ideas are really solid... go with them. change your thesis and use your body paragraphs to argue them..... :))))