Several readers have made this point:

Jonah,
It seems to me that you missed Ramesh’s point regarding this. His question was not whether torturing an innocent to get info from THEM was moral. It was whether torturing the 7 year old son of a terrorist to get info from the terrorist was permissible. After all, you’re saving a million lives, right ? I believe it was a slippery slope discussion. How about threatening to nuke his whole home town if he doesn’t tell ? Etc, etc. Where do you draw the line ?

Me: I didn’t misunderstand Ramesh, though I may have been unclear in my response. My point was that Ramesh is right to note that there are categorical boundaries between the torture of a murderer and the torture of his innocent relatives, even for people who might advocate torture of the terrorist. As Andy notes, one needn’t buy into a facile utilitarianism which says the torture of ten innocents is worth it if it means saving 10,000 innocents. As intimated with the “deadly force” analogy, we don’t as a matter of policy kill innocent people in order to save other innocent people.