Of course torture is sometimes justified. It has been used by every single country on the globe, and in every era, in some form or another. While I laud SwamP_ThinG's lofty idealism his arguments simply have no real foundation in reality, I'm afraid.

The answer to the question of whether there is ever really sufficient justification for resorting to torture is obvious if you put it into a real worst-case scenario. If one individual had the means (lets plagiarize the "24" plot and say this person had a deadly plague that would absolutely kill every human on the planet eventually, if released) to destroy all the other people on the entire planet, and you caught him but could only save the human race by torturing him for the details necessary to avert the disaster, would torture be okay then?

Sure it would be. The fundamental right to exist of every man, woman and child on the entire planet surely outweighs the right of one person to not be subjected to torture while still actively attempting to kill all those other innocent people. The fact that you saved the entire human race would more than make up for the fact that you had to stoop to torture in order to do it. In that case it's clearly justified (in the majority's best interests) that you not be required to "be any better" than the person or persons that you torture. Being "no worse" would certainly suffice.

Having said that, let me also say that from all I've heard and been taught torture is a pretty lousy way to get info anyway. It may have some uses in a real emergency, but aside from that it's usually downright counterproductive. People don't care about telling the truth under physical torture; they'll tell you whatever it is they think you really want to hear, and that's worse than useless.

This whole business at Abu Ghraib was amature in the extreme. Stunningly so. That was immediately obvious just by the way it was done. Critical intelligence interrogations don't ever use physical torture anymore, they use drugs. It's fast, surprisingly safe, and highly reliable. That's been the tool of choice for ages now. The prisoners themselves don't even know they were interrogated most of the time, or what they said. There is no pain involved, other than slipping the IV into the vein in their arm perhaps - and if even that bothers you, the drugs can also be given orally instead, in the food. When your dentist pulls a tooth for you he actually does more physical injury to you than what a modern-day interrogator would ever do. I don't see too many people coming out of their dentist's office claiming to be suffering irreperable permanent mental and emotional trauma or damage.

In real modern interrogations the general rule seems to be "What a person doesn't even know they've revealed certainly can't hurt them"