Whether or not the United States is torturing prisoners is a subject mired with lies, deceit and overall confusion. However, whether or not the United States should be torturing prisoners is clear cut in my mind. I believe that torturing prisoners, whether it be for information extraction, punishment, or other reasons is wrong and what Montaigne would consider to be barbaric. Despite the popular opinion that torturing prisoners of conflict (not war because of the Geneva Convention) for information is the right thing to do, I believe that it is pointless. Considering the fact that many of the people captured are low profile soldiers, they are not going to know the information being requested of them. Also, even in the case of high profile targets, they have been trained not to say anything, even under the threat of death. America needs to look at the war as if it were fighting itself. The “insurgents” we are fighting are not barbarians. Montaigne cites the ancient Greeks recognizing this in the very beginning of his work. The people we are fighting are just as highly organized as our own armies, even though we may perceive their guerilla style of warfare as crude and uncivilized; it has so far stumped the US as to how to properly combat it. Just because the United States perceives the war between itself and the Middle East as an easy win, does not mean that the people are any less human. They should not be tortured because they either know nothing or have been trained to reveal nothing and they are human just like us. They deserve the same as our soldiers in prison.