Torture should never be used for the purpose of extracting information.

First I will point out that you did not touch upon the accuracy of information obtained by torture, which is one of the major points in the argument. Here are my counter rebuttals to each of my points. First of all, your belief in the losing of one's right to live in peace should they disturb that right for others, I would say that sounds an awful lot like sinking to the level of the committer of the act. I have my doubts about utilitarianism but that's neither here nor there. A) You state that any person could have the potential to hold the information necessary to protect better the right to exist of the masses. Does that mean that the government can torture anyone, because they have the potential to have information that would better allow protection of the masses? So if there's even the possibility that someone has information, they should be tortured? This also ignores the possibility that information can be extracted in ways other than torture, such as interrogation without excessive coercion. B) Yes, although not all terrorists involved in large scale plots would be dedicated al quaeda members or the like, i don't think there are too many terrorist groups killing thousands of people "for laughs". Anyone who has a plan to kill a lot of people is either going to be deranged or dedicated to at least a fairly high degree. Your second sentence is confusing, what do you mean by "a person who simply doesn't harbor the same feelings towards the US" what feelings are these? C)You didn't really respond to my point in this one, could be you were confused, but what I was basically saying is that in order for police to know that there is an immediate, threatening terrorist plot and have a terrorist known to be associated with said plot in custody, the police should already have enough information to crack the case, or should have already averted the plot through gathering the information and capturing a terrorist. D) Just because torture could possibly yield useful information does not mean that it is worth it. It is very possible that an organization could torture many people and get no information before getting one small piece of accurate, useful information, but then many people would be permanently damaged. I also disagree essentially with your entire line of reasoning. I see that you believe that the right to exist of the many outweighs the right to exist in peace of the few, but a civilized society cannot operate like that. You say that a net increase in the rights of a society makes torture worth it, but don't you agree that torturing a person for information does not increase the rights of society? It decreases extremely the rights of a few individuals, in exchange for no increase in the rights of the masses, unless you count the right to life of the people that would have been killed in the attack. However, to torture undermines the very principles of a civilized society, because a civilized society has equal rights for all, irregardless of the situation. Some would say that a crisis situation is no time for high-minded ideals, but actually a crisis is the only time for ideals, because if they are not kept, then the basis of society crumbles. Another contention I have is that in your opening line, you mentioned briefly "a moral system of government". In the case of the U.S, the U.S constitution is based on protecting the rights of the individual. There is no provision in the Constitution that says "these rights may be abridged if the greater good demands it", because there IS no greater good than ensuring that every individual is afforded the same rights. To abridge these rights invites further abuse, as well as undermining the principles of the government that abuses the rights, which hurts the people. No one wants to be ruled by a government that has no legitimacy, and so to torture is self defeating, because it undermines the government. The thing that overall just hasn't been touched is the accuracy of torture, because that is vital. It's all well and good to talk about how much the information itself could help against an attack, but it's been proven again and again that torture simply does not produce accurate information. It produces what the interrogator wants to hear. There are better ways to get information, and to say that torture is an agency trying its hardest is inaccurate. Resorting to torture to get information is like going to a junk car dump when you need a ride. Sure, there might be a Porsche 911 turbo there that works great, but 99.9 percent of what you find is going to be totally useless. I have a quote too, it comes from Benjamin Franklin. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"