Sebastian has a good post, On Torture Hypotheticals–Conservative Perspective. I agree with him completely. Only if the government was perfect might it be trusted with selecting the perfect degree of force to extract information.
In the real world, innocent people are convicted and spend years in prison before their release. If months of trial and investigation can’t guarantee the right result, why should we trust someone acting in a moment, under pressure, to get it right?
The other red herring? Under the hypothetical, there’s still no reason for torture to be legal. The torturer will, in good conscience, extract the information… and immediately be pardoned for saving the lives of thousands. Despite being able to imagine such an extreme corner case [and despite the convenient assumption of perfect knowledge], I think we can keep laws against torture on the books.
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A good discussion has sprung from Sebastian’s first post: here are further posts on the subject. Demand side Torture (by Publius), More on Torture Hypotheticals (by Sebastian), and Choose your own adventure (by Katherine).