Or would you be less disgusted at the consequences of a lower probability of being able to extract any such information?

Just encountered this one by FDR as one of the quotes in Call of Duty 2 a couple days ago. Very similar sentiment

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)

Now to respond to your most recent post RA . . .

I know this gets stated a lot; but I've never seen any actual proof that it is true.

There are many ethical questions raised by the use of unpleasant forms of detainment and interrogation as means to make detainees more compliant and cooperative in providing information to interrogators.

In the context of their use by the Western democratic powers, the questions that stick out to me most are: (Alpha) for any given subject, what is the probability that they simply do not know anything useful about whatever it is they are being interrogated about; and (Beta) for any given subject, what is the probability that the potential harm to be prevented through the acquisition of information from the subject by any given method is highly positively asymmetrical or at least equivalent to the harm that can be suffered by the interrogation subject. In an ideal context, both of these parameters could be estimated and assigned P-values. Even in less than ideal contexts the parameters could still be estimated, albeit perhaps with less narrow confidence intervals.

Neither of these two questions (Alpha and Beta) are directly dependent on the specific method, whether it be waterboarding, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, use of psychoactive drugs, chronic exposure to unpleasant environmental conditions (noise, cold, heat, immersion in water) intimidation, forced exhaustion through restraint, mind games of various sorts . . . Rather, the answer to either of these two question/hypotheses, and the estimated P-value for Alpha and Beta in any given context will be dependent on (i) the nature of the information that might be acquired, and how it might help to prevent harm to others; (ii) the nature of the method of interrogation as it relates specifically to the subject (e.g., an agoraphobe could be quite readily made compliant with an interrogator through very different methods than could an arachnophobe); (iii) the nature of the potential harm that the method could cause to the interrogation subjects.

Any given method of interrogation could be quite fearsome to one subject, and rather palatable to another. If a method is likely to cause irreversible harm to a subject, then the probabilities of both (a) and (b) had better be quite high, but especially, the value of (b). Even in situations where existing evidence indicates the value of Alpha is quite high (meaning the interrogation subject is quite likely to actually know about the subject which the interrogators seek information), if the potential harm to be prevented by successfully acquiring that information is negatively asymmetrical--or to err more in favor of the individual detainee, is not at least above some reasonable positively asymmetrical value--then the method would still remain unethical. In cases where both (a) and (b) are quite high, I can see no logical basis on which to argue against virtually any form of interogation, irrespective of how disgusting, inhumane or horrific it might be.

The good of the many ALWAYS outweighs the good of the few. In defense of the people who were oppressed by the Nazis and the Tokugawa Japanese, the allied powers unleashed unthinkable acts of "torture" on not just one, or a handful of people, but on hundreds of thousands of people. Similarly, in each of the historical instances in which the nation of Israel has come under attack by her neighbors, Israel has used whatever means of fierce, disgusting violence she had at hand to coerce those neighbors either to desist or to surrender.

If one is not uncomfortable with such methods of using coercion, then it seems to me to be either myopic or hypocritical to be critical of more focused and precise methods of coercion to preemptively prevent harm to the many.

I am reminded of another quote by William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union General who is famous as one of the USA's "implements" of torture in bringing the Confederacy to submit to the Union's will.