Tortured about torture!

Torture has been in the news lately - namely, whether or not the US should be able to use torture under any circumstances. Noticeably absent from the 'human rights-ers' out there is the notion that torture WILL happen, and it is not always unjustified. If you had a chance to save a loved one from certain death, would you torture someone in order to prevent that loved one's death? I am sure most of you would say yes to that. And ifso, should you have to pay a penalty for saving a life? I am not saying that gratuitous torture is justified - it is not. But is torture also NEVER justified? I don't think the answer to that is clearly no. Alan Dershowitz wrote a great column in Huffington Post advocating 'toture warrants' limited to ticking time bomb type of situations. I think he is onto something. This is a debate we should be having and are not - because the two sides are too polarized. One side says torture is fine whenever we need to use it, and the other side says torture is NEVER fine. Well? What do you think? Read Dershowitz's article. As far as whether torture ever works...I can tell you that I have been in physical pain lately, and certainly if there was a magic bean that took away the pain, I would be willing to do tons of things! I do believe torture can work. The question then remains - do we degrade ourselves by torturing? I say we don't if the cause is saving a human life under Dersh's limited circumstances.