There is a plausible theoretical case to be made for the Ticking Time Bomb (TTB) scenario.

But to be clear: the conditions under which it holds have never been realized in the past, are unlikely to be realized in the future (though they could be), and were certainly not realized in the case of any of Bushco's actual torture war crimes for which they should be vigorously prosecuted from top to bottom. Furthermore, Krauthammer disingenously uses the TTB scenario to provide cover for his far less defensible 2nd exception, which the entire rest of his column is based on.

Let me be perfectly clear: I despise torture. I yield to no one in my hatred of torture or my desire to see George Bush and half of his cabinet go to jail for the war crimes, including torture, which they have committed. Anyone who doubts this is welcome to read my past letters here on Salon. I am perhaps Glenn Greenwald's most shameless fanboy.

My motivations in making this point is 1) philosophical and 2) strategic.

The Philosophic Point: I am a consequentialist rather than a deontologist in ethics. That's because I believe that its the consequences, i.e. what actually happens, that are the bottom line in morality. I think absolute moral prohibitions and exceptionless rules based on nebulous natural laws are too easily used to excuse bad outcomes. Hence I do not believe in a 100% torture is wrong always and everywhere rule just as I don't believe in any 100% prohibition against anything else.

The Ticking Time Bomb scenario (which I will lay out in a separate post since I will probably hit my word count limit) is highly unlikely but utterly plausible. In today's nuclear world, it could happen and we have to accept that. Philosophically, the TTB scenario decisively debunks deontological ethics by reducing that position to absurdity. In order to do that the scenario need only be logically possible, not empirically probable. Anyone who would trade off 15 million lives in order to protect their would be murderer or adhere to a rule is a monster.

The Strategic Point: In addition to being philosophically interesting, the point I made above about torture also raises a question about the tactics of opposing torture, like that that the Bush Administration illegally and immorally conducted.

Strategically, I think it is counterproductive to take a really strident stand and vehemently deny that my scenario could ever happen or to take the extreme deontological position that we shouldn’t use torture even in the conditions of my scenario. I think the idea that we would have to torture in those rare circumstances is pretty much common sense.

But all too often people on our side do resort to those strategically misguided arguments and/or ad hominem attacks like, “you’re stoned” or “you love torture” or “you’re an adolescent.” Making those arguments plays into the hands of the torturers by making our side look like extreme and irrational pacifists, thus undermining our credibility when it counts. Far better is to acknowledge common sense and distinguish actual circumstances from the hypothetical ones in my scenario.

What about this scenario:

Terrorists get a nuke or some other powerful bomb. They begin Operation Bomb New York which requires a great deal of planning and a team of conspirators. They first work on getting the bomb into New York, which they have done, but they are not finished yet figuring out the details of the timing or the blackmail operation that’s going to be part of the plan. So there are, say, weeks or even months until they would actually detonate. In the meantime, our intelligence services intercept a communication or bug a room or surreptitiously copy a hard drive revealing many details of their plan, but NOT the location of the bomb, and the terrorists don’t know this. So we know several of the people who are part of the plan and we know that some of them know the location of the bomb. We capture one of the conspirators whom we know knows the location of the bomb. We interrogate him for a week trying all kinds of non-torture methods to get the location out of him but he is totally recalcitrant.

Do we torture him in order to save hundreds or thousands or, in the case of a nuclear scenario, possibly miilions of lives? Also, in this scenario, we have a way to tell if he is lying or not. If he tells us the bomb is at 454 W. 108th St. Apt 222, we can send agents there to check out his claim. If he is lying we can step up the intensity of the torture.

Unless he is Super Terrorist who can withstand all pain, I have to think he would spill the beans. I know I would once they wired up my balls, tore my fingernails off, and stuck needles in my eyes, if not long before then.

The scenario you're describing depends upon far too many conditions to be creditable

But to make the philosophical case, it only needs to be logically possible. I can stipulate as many conditions as I want in my hypothetical and as long as they are not lgically impossible then the philosophical point stands.

If they're that inhuman, that sociopathic, why would they fear being tortured?

Uh, because it hurts really bad?

if torture worked to get info, you wouldn't exactly have to waterboard somebody 180 times, would you?

Khalid Sheikh Muhammed just didn't have the info that Bushco wanted to hear, e.g. a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda.

Sure torture can't get you info that the victim doesn't have to give. But in my scneario, he does have it and we know that he has it.