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.

Rebuttal Prewriting

For my rebuttal editorial, I feel I am not fully committed to the topic. The topic is about torture. I am not a fan about torture, but when reading the article, I felt that it was emphasizing one certain method of torture that was not considered torture in today modern definition. It said that keeping someone isolated from other imamates or keeping someone awake for more than 20 hours a day is not considered torture. This editorial wanted to categorize the idea of keeping someone isolated or even keeping them awake for more than 20 hours a method of torture. I feel that this is one way of torture that is far less painful than other methods that have been committed in the past. Torture can range from injecting chemicals into the body, drowning imamates, threatening imamates, killing families of the imamate, and many more. I’m not saying that all of these are legal, but not getting enough sleep or even keeping them away awake is bad.

Link to My Editorial

Title: Torture’s Loopholes
Author: Matthew Alexander
Published: January 20, 2010
Publisher: The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/opinion/21alexander.html?scp=8&sq=january+21+2010&st=nyt

Homework for Monday Jan 25, 2010. Searching Editorials

When searching for and looking at editorials, I found a wide variation of topics that were being discussed. These topics varied from health care and ratings on Obama’s first year to Wall Street. Also I found a lot of miscellaneous topics that were being discussed from the use of steroids in baseball to movie critics. I did not like reading editorials that talked about Obama, healthcare or Wall Street. I feel all of those issues are based on politics and use a lot of quantitative facts. These topics just bore me to death because when I think about these topics, I feel it is high powered people sitting around arguing about nit picking facts. I find no interest in these editorials, even if the issues can directly affect me now or in the future. The type of articles I would prefer to read would include opinions that relate to war, opinions about sustainability and relief aid to the poor and/or to Haiti. I like these topics because I feel that they are about people doing good in the world for others. I feel these that editorials will talk about the people that are willing to give something of their own to help other strangers around the world live a better life. If I was to respond to one of the topics that I prefer to read about, I would mainly challenge the assumption because the topics about war and Haiti relief do not rely on certain facts or information. Rather, topics such as war or Haiti relief really depend on the whole situation. If I was to respond to a topic which I wouldn’t prefer, I would mainly challenge the evidence due to the fact that politics are covered with facts that could be challenged. The most interesting editorial I found this weekend was an article that was titled” In Ballad, Smoke and Fire”. From looking at the picture, it looked like it would be an article about soldiers and the extraction of soldiers from Middle East and other war zones around the world. But when reading deeper into the article, I found it was really about sustainability. It was about an army base in the Middle East who was burning toxic chemicals and other hazardous materials as a mean of discarding waste. I feel this is my favorite editorial at the moment and I might decide to choose this editorial as my final choice.

Artemis Fowl, A childhood Reflection

The children novel series novel that I loved to read was the Artemis Fowl Series Eoin Colfer. There are a total of 6 main books in the series and one mini novel. The novels were about a young boy named Artemis Fowl who was considered a genius at very young age. With his smarts and his father’s money, he was one of the most notorious criminals on the world. The crimes that Artemis committed lead him to an underground world where fairies, trolls and other fictional characters existed. He began to work with the police of this underground world in order to gain more money and secret powers that the underground had. Also, Artemis worked with the underground police force in order to save the people on the earth’s surface from very powerful humans and criminals from the underworld as well. I felt the reason why I enjoyed reading these books was because of my love for fantasy. I felt that this book incorporated fantasy with the usage of Minotaurs, fairies, trolls and other fictional creatures with a story that could also involve the real world. Also another reason why I enjoyed reading all of the books was because it appealed to the idea that a child can do so much, even though what Artemis does is considered crimes on the human society. When looking back at the series of Artemis Fowl from a college student’s standpoint, I felt that the problems and issues that the main characters were faced with were handled in a way that would have made for a good book, but would have not been realistic. Because this was made for children with much curiosity, this would have appealed to them almost perfectly. For example, there was a situation where one certain race of aliens was about to be completely destroyed from their planet. In the story, the main characters decided to save them through the black magic of the underground, which was prohibited of them to use. When reading the novel as a child, I felt that it was right for them to use this black magic to save all of these aliens from the brink of extinction because I feel most children are raised with the mindset that everything will be okay and life is precious. But as an adult, this one situation makes me think of the genocide in many sites in South Africa. When reading about the genocide, it makes me realize that there is no magic that can prevent the genocide. Rather, I feel the situation that was told in this one part of the series left out any notion or idea of sacrifice, which is important to my viewpoints being a college student now.