The analogy between the pacifist and the no-torture absolutist, however, strikes me as lazy, wrong, and just plain vile. The Constitution recognizes war as a legitimate activity in some cases and provides for it. The Constitution however forbids torture, indirectly through it's Article VI clauses supporting treaties such as the CAT, and explicitly in the Eighth Amendment.

I'm not so sure this argument is as strong as you all think. First of all, the 8th Amendment applies to circumstances of punishment. If there is a nuke about to go off in Manhattan, it is a matter of saving lives and national security, not punishment.

I think the war analogy may be apt to an important extent. We already allow extrajudicial killings in some circumstances, e.g. war and shooting someone who is threatening someone else's life. In war, we essentially torture thousands of people. When you firebomb Dresden or nuke Nagasaki there are many thousands of people who endure agonizing injuries that woudl unquestionably count as torture if there were someone there individually making it happen.

Absolutely, 100%, no! Not EVER!

This is fumdamentally a deontologist's way of looking at the moral issue. Personally, I think this view is the opposite of the honorable and moral view. You would seriously sacrifice 15 million people in New York City in order to protect the rights of their murderer who refuses to divulge the location of the bomb?

In your case, I know you're just reacting emotionally to your revulsion at torture. In one sense that is an admirable reaction. But if, in the real world, my scenario came to pass and you really made that decision, I would call you a mosnter.

The results are inherently unreliable, and the intel gained simply not creditable, and the time wasted with it too valuable. Can we at least agree on that?

Well, most of the time. I think torture probably works some of the time, especially when, as in my scenario, you can check the information you're given.

I do agree with you and others here that the TTB case is so unlikely and the danger of the slippery slope so great that we should not institutionalize anything like Dershowitz's torture warrant proposal. Let it stay illegal and if my nightmare scenario were to come true, I'm sure people would do what they had to do and no jury would ever convict. But let them face the possibility of prosecution in an act of civil disobedience.

It's not logically possible though. You've done nothing but conjure up fiction. If you are truly trying to make it a philosophical question based on logic, you'll need to demonstrate some scenarios that actually have occurred which enable one to make a logical conclussion.

No. I don't think you understand what "logical possibility" is. As long as my scenario is not a self-contradiction it is logically possible.

We have the ticking nuclear bomb. Only terrorist A can tell us where it is. Suppose we can't capture A, but we can capture his children.Do we seize his children, and torture and possibly sexually his them, and let terrorist A know about it, demanding that he tell us how to find and defuse the bomb?

This is the hardest case for the consequentialist. It is essentially a variant of the well known organ harvesting objection to utilitarianism.

But the answer, Frankly-o, is yes. With 15 million lives at stake, the answer has to be yes. If the terrorist is Super Terrorist who can resist all pain except the pain of watching his child get tortured, then among the evil choices we are faced with, that would still be by far the least evil.

To be clear, what you are proposing is a choice between:

1) 15 million killed as well as hundreds of thousands hideously tortured, including innocent children all over New York City hideously tortured as a result of the nuclear blast

OR

2) One tortured but still living terrorist and one tortured but still living innocent child

Given those 2 choices, I choose 2).

But I don't think your scenario is realistic either. I think the guy would break under massive torture. If we had to torture his kid, hopefully he would break instantly rather than allow his kid to be tortured for an hour or more before breaking. But to be fair, you could stipulate a scenario, in which I am faced with the choice you describe and then I would be forced to do what I had to do -- to save 15 million lives.

I'm just not buying into how you are attempting to redefine "philosophy" or "logic."

It's not just me. Check the books and the academic journals on ethics. They are chock full of logically possible hypothetical cases. The sense of "logically possible" that I am using here is the standard one used in philosophy, not my own invention.