Rhetorical Analysis Due Monday Feb 1

For the article “Torture Loopholes”, the author does acknowledge some other views. For example he states “The Field Manual, to its credit, calls for “all captured and detained personnel, regardless of status” to be “treated humanely.””, but he responds that it contradicts itself. Also he mentions other views of about torture and responds to them as well. The author also uses pathos, ethos, and logos throughout his argument. In the third paragraph, he establishes himself as an air force officer, thus establishing his ethos as a person who could have experiences torture in a war scenario. In the eighth paragraph, he uses pathos in his usage of the golden rule. He states “Golden Rule: what would we consider inhumane treatment if one of our own soldiers were captured by the enemy? My answer: Given the youth of our men and women in uniform, that number is probably around two weeks”. This is appealing to our feelings about what if our own sons, daughters, cousins, mother, father, etc were being tortured. He uses logos throughout his whole editorial. He says that there are better ways that aren’t considered abuse that have gotten him information in the past and other stories throughout his military career. His audience is anyone who would want to read this editorial, resulting in anyone who cares about the idea of torture, people who are fighting to bring up dirt on President Obama, people who care for soldiers overseas, etc. His purpose could be to bring up the issue of this new technique of abuse that the United States and other nations are using as another technique of torture and in order to get it ban. His claim is that keeping people awake for 20 hours or more and keeping people confined to isolation for 30 days is considered torture that the current torture manual misses. My rebuttal argument to this editorial is that even though no one wants torture in this world, there are many stricter methods of torture that have been use and have been ban. This method is just one way that provides us information that can help protect the United States and is not considered cruel and unusual.