Anyone who doesn't like hypotheticals is welcome to pass on this one. That would be a waste of your time and mine.
My personal position is that torture, as it is commonly understood, is in almost all cases wrong, evil, violates human rights, and would likely not elicit the truth anyway. The victim would say or do almost anything to stop the pain.
However...
Say you've arrested Heinrich Himmler towards the end of WW II who knows the location of a well hidden concentration camp, its existence proven by certain documentation and by his own admission, but he refuses to divulge its whereabouts.
And let's assume for the moment that there is no other way to locate it before a hundred thousand innocents including children and babies are tortured beyond anything imaginable, subject to all kinds of sick, horrific medical experiments, and then gassed.
Is that not a practical case where at least a waterboarding (or more) couldn't hurt?
Perhaps the issue of torture is a bit less black and white than we make it out to be.
UPDATE: I've tried to respond to as many comments as I can for now and I appreciate much food for thought you've given me.
I have to go offline and the diary will go off the front page, but over time I will really try to ponder and answer all comments except for those with only ad hominem or no argument. Thanks for your input.