Commentary # 3

Hello Tiana Kentera, after reading your paper, I feel that it was clear, organized, and soundly developed, a few bumps with spelling here and there. I feel that your essay was clear because you thesis was clear and you immediately identify that you believe that the government should stop trying to justify torture by calling it a different name like water boarding or enhanced torture.

                I do feel that your criteria’s matched your arguments and you provided compelling evidence to support your thesis.  I like how you gave examples of Guantanamo Bay and the torturous ways the prisoners have to suffer by their superior officers. On your second paragraph you begin to describe what waterboarding is and you wrote “tying the prisoner or soldier to a board and wrapping towels around their face and dunking them in water,” I think you need to change the part of dunking them in water because the prisoners or soldiers don’t get dunked, the person who is water boarding adds the water to the towel. The criteria that especially hit me and that can persuade an audience to agree with you. What you can add to your argument is that you need to argue more on your criteria about Abu Ghraib prison, if the Americans in the pictures suffered the consequences of their actions. Another thing that I think you need to add in your introduction is that you just wrote Abu Ghraib but did not add prison to it, cause your audience might think it’s a person, like myself did not know it was a prison until the third page. I see that in your argument you are weight that torture is morally wrong and you give good examples but what can make your argument stronger is that you can add information on how torture is physical and psychological which can be permanent, because you only briefly mention it.  Another thing is that you can restructure your quotes so it would not seem like you are cherry picking or placing them randomly, that way your audience would not counter argue you.  You can also expand if John Yoo had any consequences to his misconduct. Besides that your argument is good, your paragraphs are good in length. You have a good conclusion that can easily be a transition to your proposal argument hopefully this helps you in your final draft coming up.  Good luck!