David Luban - Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb

"But the pressure of liberalism will compel them to think about it in a highly stylized and artificial way, what I will call the 'liberal ideology of torture.' The liberal ideology insists that the sole purpose of torture must be intelligence gathering to prevent a catastrophe; that torture is necessary to prevent the catastrophe; that torturing is the exception, not the rule, so that it has nothing to do with state tyranny; that those who inflict the torture are motivated solely by looming catastrophe, with no tincture of cruelty; that torture in such circumstances is, in fact, little more than self-defense; and that, because of the associations of torture with the horrors of yesteryear, perhaps one should not even call harsh interrogation 'torture.'
 And the liberal ideology will crystalize all of these ideas in a single, mesmerizing example: the ticking time bomb."(source)