The most often used excuse for torture is the so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario: if law-
enforcement officials manage to capture a terrorist who happens to know the location of a ticking time bomb set to go off and kill many people but refuses to disclose that location, it would then be reasonable to torture him [...]
Those who criticize the Bush administration for sanctioning torture often point out that information obtained through torture is generally faulty. Prisoners will say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear in order to end the pain, accurate or not.
One problem with this criticism is that it implies that if torture were effective it [...]