It is never justified to torture terrorists.

what is ridiculous is my opponents continual flight into fantasy to pretend there are always ways to prevent a bomb from exploding. he literally has people turning the city inside and out to find bombs which could be hidden anywhere, and he's talking about technology that isn't always useful. a bomb would have to be hidden in a spot where they could scan it, without lead or whatever could hide it, and in the largest metro areas they'd have to be scanning every few feet everywhere, turning buildings inside and out etc. if the size is two feet? here are some places it could be hidden (or a lethal bomb that isn't as easily detected). a random house above the ceiling, below the floor above. prop up some side walk area, dig a hole, put it in, put side walk back down. bore out some grass and put the bomb there, put bomb back, it's undected by the naked eye. insde a gas tank of a random car. ventilation systems of large buildings. elevator shafts. hidden around the engine area of a random car. a septic tank underground. i could go on and on into areas that could not be deduced unless we tore the city and everything in it to shreds, practically. these are all places that are not easily scanned or deduced... and that's assuming we have enough scanners, which we probably wouldn't, and assuming the bomb is a variety that could be scanned, which is probably not, and that we can located something near enough to find it. here is a hypothetical. Bob the terrorist says a nonnuclear (read, bomb without the technological traces of advanced bombs) but highly lethal bomb will explode in a few hours in city 1. it does. immediately after, he says where it was specifically located, and the epicenter shows that he was correct. a while later, he repeats the process for city 2. then 3. now before he says 4, we know he must be on to something by virtue of his accurate calls and specific locations. we don't have much other evidence to go on, it could be any city, anywhere. he says city 4... what do we do? if we fail in that one, and he says city five, what do we do? perhaps instead of a bomb he knows of a street gang that will suddenly grab people and start torturing them, and he repeats the process successfully city after city until we know he knows what he's talking about. im only making hypotheicals that cannot have holes poked into them by fanciful theories that would never work in real life. the hypo may be less realistic, but that's only because i'm catering the unrealities of opponent, and making a hypotheical that is ironclad. i'm sure we'll hear of unicorns and the possibility of Xmen with mind reading and bomb detecting abilities next, and how we can't torture until we've exhausted finding those with said abilities etc. what i'm trying to do in essence (most of this hypo debating is a distraction from the real issues) is show that we could be realistically forced to either let people die or be tortured, or give torture a shot. opponent is stretching his credibility, being tenuous etc, about alternatives etc, probably most likely because he doesn't want to say that he'd let millions die (or themselves be tortured, or whatever) before he'd torture someone. this is probably because he knows that that'd be immoral and we all understand this intuitively. he goes on philosophically about how it's immoral to torture in and of itself... yet he won't elaborate and go on philosophically etc about how it's the morally superior position to let millions die, or be tortured, instead of torturing a person when there are no real alternatives. simply saying torture is wrong, period, isn't really articulating a reason why it's better than letting millions die.... if you're going to add a "torture is wrong period" to anything, it should be after a reasoned response about letting people die or be tortured. the reason he has yet to really elaborate like this, is because he probably knows better. because it would be ridciduolus and absolutely wrong and immoral to let millions die, or be tortured themselves, or whatever, because someone won't torture a person.