It is probably a weary thing to add to this discussion, but as far as I can see torture in the American "ticking bomb" scenarios would be an admission of terrible failure in at least two of the three basic threats of any seriousness. Biological warfare is not a mass threat to anyone, in spite of the hoo-ha about it. The only weapons of mass destruction that matter are nuclear weapons or dirty nuclear bombs. The three basic threats at the top end of the scale are: the disintegration of Pakistan to the point where one of the terrorist groups gets hold of a nuclear weapon; the whole entanglement of Israel, Iran, and Iraq to the point of a war; and three, the leaking of a nuclear weapon from the Russian stockpile. I don't see anything else on the apocalypse scale. Two of the three are resolvable with some decent politics to an extent that the threat would ease. The Russian case is different: that is why the Americans threw money at the containment. (They did the same with the Pakistanis who probably spent it on tanks to attack India).

yours,

Peter T.