I'm sorry, the more I think about it, the more I just have to say, "this is a stupid question."

Is torture wrong? Of course it is. Purposefully treating any human as he or she had no rights and abusing them in any way is just wrong, no matter what code you evaluate your life by.

But. What if you are a police officer. What if you know with 100% certainty that a bomb has been planted in a day care with 1000 4 year olds in it and that it will be detonated in 30 minutes. What if there is no possible way to evacuate the building completely before it goes off. What if you know with 100% certainty that the single individual you have in your presence knows where the bomb is and how to defuse it. What if he flat out refuses to divulge the information you need to save those children?

Does that one person's right to be treated with dignity and humanity outweigh the rights of the 1000 children to live? What about their parent's rights to enjoy watching them grow up? If you torture this suspect, you are certainly employing a bad means to accomplish a good end.

What if ... what if ... what if ... dumb question.

It's another question dealing with the social contract between a people and its government. What rights do we freely give up to protect the sanctity of our lives and lifestyles? No individual should be torturing any other individual, but you can't really say that no government should ever torture an individual. You can say you'd like to think we've all evolved to the point where torture is never necessary. But let's be realistic here, we haven't reached that point, globally speaking, as a species yet. The world just is not that enlightened.