Is torture useful?
I actually think it probably is useful. People respond to incentives, if you give people an incentive through torture to give up information, they're more likely to give it up. Torture makes the cost of not talking high. This is not too complicated, when governments don't want people to do something they tax it, when they want someone to do something they subsidize it. Torture is a tax on keeping your mouth shut.
What if they still don't talk? Raise the tax; turn the torture up a notch.
If they still don't talk? Repeat
And if they still don't talk after you've maxed out the torture? Well I said that torture works, not that it always works. Give up this time.
What if they lie? Make the credible promise of more torture if they're found out to have lied about it.
That doesn't mean torture is just. It only means torture is useful. It could be that despite its usefulness we still shouldn't do it because it's wrong.
But commonsense morality says otherwise. When I ask people whether they will kill a baby to save the world, they always save the baby. People are mild deontologists. They wouldn't kill to save 2 lives, but they would to save 100. And you're telling me that they wouldn't torture a terrorist to save the world? To save a country? To save 100 innocent people?
On this issue, one side has taken the torture the never-ever torture position, but the other side hasn't taken the always torture position, that's absurd! The other side is a sometimes torture position. They simply believe that there are times when torture is permissible. We can debate when that may be the case, but that's variance within the pro-torture position.
I had a similar epiphany regarding the pro-life position. Pro-life believe that life begins at conception and not a moment later. Pro-choice captures all the differences outside of that.
When your side holds one sliver of the possible right answers, and the other side holds everything outside of that, your side isn't set up for success.
