>>These things can always be reduced to a personal emotional level (imagine it was you, or imagine it was your...), but it's worth asking if a supposedly civilised society should be operated on the basis of every individual's personal emotions? It would be chaos. At some point a society must decide collectively on what it considers to be a civilised culture, and then it must live by that decision, or collectively change it. The decision about torture not belonging in a civilised society was made long ago in western society, and the general consensus has not changed as far as I can tell.
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>>Now, as to the point of threatening torture, well, I have no qualms at all about lying to a suspect to get information.
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>In order for a threat to have any value it has to have credibility. By explicitly stating up front what you will never do and where the boundries are you give a tremendous advantage to the other side. this is true in military confrontation, business, pretty much anything.
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>the whole point of not explicitly banning anything is to make those threats credible.

We're talking about a police station here. How would the suspect know for sure if he's being interrogated by a crazy or not? He'd probably figure that whatever the cop did to him (against the law or not), the cop would probably get away with it. People watch too much TV and movies, and they see cops on screen doing all sorts of 'over the line' stuff and getting away with it. In their minds, that can easily give the threats credibility.

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>As to 'society deciding collectively' ... I think it is more important that an individual decide personally what is important and what isn't. I am not convinced consensus is, per-se, wisdom.

I never said it was 'wisdom'. But mostly what it is not, is chaos and anarchy. Sure every citizen has to decide personally what's important, but that same individual must also exist within the society he/she has chosen as home. I can't believe that you feel each citizen should disregard the mores of society and do whatever he/she chooses. That's what bank robbers and rapists do.