Not evil overlords
The current discussion of "torture" is asking two wrong questions.

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Wrong question 1: You can't make moral decisions inside a war. Suicidal. When you're fighting a war you do EVERYTHING that is likely to be effective. You don't want to do lots of unnecessary stuff and lose unnecessary lives, but you also don't want to skip a technique or action that could realistically lead to victory.

Morality comes BEFORE you fight a war. Is this war necessary? If it's not necessary for survival, don't do it at all. Stay home and enjoy life.

Only two of America's wars were necessary and justified. 1812 and WW2. Within those wars, EVERYTHING was permissible. All of our other wars, especially all the wars after 1945, were unnecessary and immoral. Within those wars, EVERYTHING was immoral because the war ITSELF was immoral.

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Wrong question 2: The 'human timebomb' question. If Mohammed Mohammed Mohammed knows where and when an atomic bomb will explode under Los Angeles, should you torture him to get the info?

Yes.

But the Yes is null, the question is meaningless, because the scenario has never happened. A scenario that has never happened in all the warlike violent history of humanity is not going to happen. That's as close to a fact as you can get.

Why hasn't it happened? Because that's how fictional Evil Overlords run wars. An Evil Overlord would put all the knowledge about the bomb in the mind of one man so the one man could be killed (making the bomb useless) or captured or flipped.

Real clandestine operatives aren't that dumb. Specifically, al-Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL/IS/Islamic State aren't that dumb. Why aren't they dumb? Because they were trained by CIA or similar agencies. American intel agencies, at the sharp end, are extremely smart. They know how to distribute information among humans and paper sources and electronic sources to guarantee that the info can't be lost or captured.

  ¶ 3:40 PM