Sitting in my Criminal Procedure class this afternoon, the Professor presented the following hypothetical:
A known terrorist has just swallowed a piece of paper with the disarm code to a nuclear device on it. The device, if detonated, will kill a 10,000 Americans. The bomb has been located, but cannot be moved, and there are 2 minutes remaining before it goes off...Would you torture him to get the code?
A large minority (close to half) within the class was audibly shocked to hear somebody say 'yes, I would.'
When asked further, people generally placed the number of lives great enough before an act of torture is justified at somewhere around 100,000. By that same reasoning, torturing one known terrorist would not have been justified the day before 9/11.
Moral high ground is thus more important than survival for this group of people, many of whom will be earning 6 figures on graduation next year, and some of whom will go on to careers in leadership.
Sad state of affairs, in my opinion.