The topic was proposed by a student in the class who had actually thought about it beforehand, no one else had any good ideas.
The "winner" of the debate was determined by a panel of other teachers (part of the reason he got in trouble the teachers were "ruling" on gov't policy). Nobody seems to understand that the people (me and a few others) defending the US's policys could actually win. Everyone assumed that it was biased by his politics such that obviously the result would be anti-American. It was actually quite fun. Though I'd say that the reason my group won was largely becuase in 2006 a lot less was known about Gitmo. We could do a lot of "you can't prove that X Y or Z is happening, that is just conjecture", that we wouldn't be able to do today.
As a side note, I'm firmly in the anti-toture and anti-DU camp, but I always find it more interesting in debate to side with the group you disagree with.
Torture is a topic that lends itself to emotional reasoning. How can you be such a meanie? How can _you_ put children at risk while terrorists are running free?
DU also lends itself to sloppy reasoning. People take for granted that it is a radioactivity problem when it's actually a heavy-metal toxicity problem. Radioactivity is more emotional.
The key point was that this wasn't his idea. He solicited topics for debate from the students in the class, those two were chosen as the topics.
This got misconstrued by some parents who were offended as he pushed us to consider these questions becuase he was liberal, and thus was bringing his political beliefs into the classroom.
I ended up being the lead on the team that defended torture and depleted uranium (and we won), and somehow the more difficult debate actually ended up being the one I had at the school board meeting defending him.