Despite the unconstitutionality of the practice, torture has been present throughout our nation's history. From the Salem witch trials of 1692, in which Giles Corey was forced to death, to the waterboarding of 21st-century terrorist suspects, the United States has not always lived up to the ideal that torture should never be used to no purpose. The popular culture image of a man being beaten by police officers in a locked room, away from public view, is not just fiction, but a semi-officially accepted means of "getting the job done." Alan Dershowitz refers to the specific example of “…a case decided in 1984, [in which] the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals commended police officers who tortured a kidnapper into revealing the location of the his victim (554)". While I agree that torture was not an acceptable method to extract a confession from Corey or to uncover terrorist information from Guantánamo detainees, I believe that legitimizing the use of torture in certain circumstances would lead to an improvement in our current state of health. business. Accepting torture as a tool for saving lives is not the same as accepting torture as a good thing. Instead, accepting torture is a last resort to prevent the loss of innocent lives when no other options remain. As barbaric and cruel as it may be to intentionally cause pain to another human being, how much more barbaric and cruel would it be to sacrifice the lives of a city's population? I can't imagine that even the most outspoken critic of torture would allow their family to be burned for the purpose of sparing a temporary amount of pain to the person threatening to trigger the explosion. Luckily, these scenarios remain largely the purview of Hollywood... middle of paper... who wants to prevent their deaths because they don't want to hurt the person about to kill them. Acceptance of torture is not an easy pill to swallow. Intentionally causing pain to others goes against how we define ourselves as a nation and as human beings. But allowing innocents to suffer harm is part of the same definition. Works Cited Dershowitz, Alan M. "Yes, It Should Be 'In the Books'." The Little, Brown Reader. Ed. Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain. Boston: Longman, 2009. 554. Heymann, Philip B. “Torture Should Not Be Authorized.” The little brown reader.Ed. Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain. Boston: Longman, 2009. 552.Levin, Michael. “The case of torture”. The little brown reader.Ed. Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain. Boston: Longmann,2009. 549.