Torture and Ticking Time-Bombs

I just finished reading this book.  It is very well researched and well argued.  Allhoff, a utilitarian, argues that torture is morally permissible in extreme circumstances where there is good reason to believe that a terrorist has information which might be valuable in preventing a catastrophe.  He defines torture--helpfully contrasting it with terrorism, canvasses the various arguments for and against torture, spends a reasonable amount of time discussing U.S. legal policies on torture vis-a-vis international law (the Geneva Convention, etc.), discusses practical implementation and public policy issues, and also provides some real life examples of when torture led to information preventing a huge catastrophe.  Not being a utilitarian, I found the weakest part of the book to be his criticisms of in-principle, absolutist objections to torture.  But he does challenge the reader to offer an argument explaining why torture is in-principle never permissible, and I found the in-principle arguments he covers to be far from compelling.

Allhoff also discusses torture in kidnapping situations.  In chapter seven he leaves the reader with the following story:

Height of the [Australian] summer, Mercury at the century-mark; the noonday sun softened the [asphalt] beneath the [tires] of her little Hyundai sedan to the consistency of putty.  Her three year old son, quiet at last, snuffled in his sleep on the back seat.  He had a summer cold and wailed like a banshee in the supermarket, forcing her to cut short her shopping.  Her car needed [gas].  Her tot was asleep on the back seat.  She poured twenty [liters] into the tank; thumbing notes from her purse, harried and distracted, her keys dangled from the ignition.

[While] she was in the service station a man drove off in her car.  Police wound back the [service station's close-captioned television], saw a heavy set Pacific Islander with a blonde-streaked Afro entering her car.  "Don't panic," a Constable advised the mother, "as soon as he sees your little boy in the back he will abandon the car."  He did; police arrived at the railway station before the car thief did and arrested him after a struggle when he vaulted over the station barrier.

In the [patrol car] on the way to the police station: "Where did you leave the [car]?" Denial instead of dissimulation: "It wasn't me."  It was [him]--property stolen from the car was found in his pockets.  In the detectives' office: "[It's] been twenty minutes since you took the car--little tin box like that car--It will heat up like an oven under this sun.  Another twenty minutes and the child's dead or brain damaged.  Where did you dump the car?"  Again: "It wasn't me."