Why is that? Because normally there are lots of viable alternatives. It is only when time is running out that you are likely to also run low on viable alternatives. Thus the scenarios in which torture might become the least repugnant alternative are also those scenarios in which there is very little time to work with. But torture only generates reliable information when the torturers are sure that their victim has the specific information they need and when they can credibly promise the victim that they will torture him/her again in the future if it turns out they have lied.

Consider the popular scenario in which authorities have captured one of the Islamic suicide-terrorists involved with planting a nuclear bomb in the city. If the terrorist knows where the bomb is and when it will go off, he only has to wait until he’s tortured and then provide false information (he was probably trained to do so). Time is on his side, unfortunately. This is not a promising scenario for torture to be successful (nor perhaps any other technique). And if the terrorist does not in fact know the necessary details, torture will at best draw out false information which will likewise waste authorities’ precious time.

Torture seems to be most promising as a technique when you hold the victim for weeks or months and have plenty of time to torture them in retaliation for false information — with time you can break them down and give them no hope for relief from being tortured. But when there is this much time, there are always many civilized alternatives to torture which will be far less morally repugnant.

So torture should always be illegal. But if a torturer can demonstrate in court that there was so little time that torture was the least morally repugnant alternative available, as a juror I’d consider that exculpatory.

Christians should be ashamed of any form of torture or violence, after all didn’t jesus teach ‘love thy neighbor’ and ‘do unto other as you would have them do to you’?

I fully agree that there is an historical association between communist totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union and China and mass murder, imprisonment of political opponents, and other unforgivable practices. And those regimes were officially atheist and they suppressed religious liberty. Which mean that atheism has a definite association with those horrible behaviors. All atheists today should resoundingly condemn mass murder, imprisonment of political opponents, and other infringements on human rights. Just as (this is my point) all Christians today should resoundingly condemn torture.

We must never forget that people who believed like us did horrible things. And unfortunately, in the case of the Bush administration, are doing horrible things in our name today.