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That is the exact argument I reliably hear from them. Bringing up that some torture gets useful intelligence generates a lot of hostility and denial.
(EDIT I got called a "torture apologist" for saying that some torture gets useful intelligence by this very person, so, yep, this conversation went exactly the way I thought it would.)
The anti-torture movement has been colonized nearly completely by people opposed to Bush's GWOT and they want him to be both stupid and evil.
I'm not saying Bush's use of torture was stupid - it was a logical plan to achieve his goals. He wanted to start a (second) land war in Asia, and in order to sell it to the normally-isolationist Republican base he needed false intelligence that Iraq was helping Al-Quaeda. Torturing KSM was a good way of getting it. (The bad info on WMD had a different target audience, including people like me, and was in any case probably an honest mistake). Nobody is questioning that torture is useful when what you want is a false confession, or even a true one.
I am saying that the intelligence gained by torturing KSM was net-negative for the US, because the most consequential thing we got out of him was false.
I am also saying that John Fortescue writing in the 1460's, Abraham Lincoln issuing executive orders in 1863, and the negotiators of the 1907 Hague Conventions were not motivated by their attitude to the foreign policy of George W Bush.
I am not saying it was, either. But I am saying the anti-torture movement did not want to have an uncomfortable discussion that we were leaving a useful tool on the table by declining to torture, because "it does not work anyway."
But life is not a morality play. Sometimes making the morally right decision leaves you worse off. That is why it is called the moral decision. If you pay nothing for your principles they are not principles.
See, now, this is even worse. Torture can absolutely get confirmable information out of a person. That is extremely useful in a conflict. Pretending it is just useful for false confessions to manufacture a war is refusing to face reality.
An anti-torture movement that is built the idea that torture does not work is built on a foundation of lies and will crumble to dust in the first strong wind.
An anti-torture movement that says "yes torture works, but we refuse to do it, because those are our principles" is healthy in the long term.
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Is it controversial that Bush was both stupid and evil?
President George W. Bush didn't even know of the existence of the Sunni and Shia sects in Iraq until 3 months before the invasion, after the decision had been made to attack and they were well into the war-justification phase. Only when they brought in an Iraqi dissident did he tell Bush about it. This is from Galbraith's book "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End". What kind of idiot doesn't read a brief summary of the country he's planning to invade? The whole war was conducted in an incredibly reckless and ill-planned way, with predictably catastrophic consequences for the region. Bush didn't know about the Shia majority in Iraq, how this would obviously give the Iranians a way to influence the country if he demolished the state apparatus.
Let's not forget the Axis of Evil speech where he threatened pre-emptive strikes against Iran and North Korea. Iran hated Saddam and the Taliban, Bush lumped them all together in the anti-US camp. He effectively told Iran 'make our Iraq experience as disastrous as possible or you're the next target'. North Korea nuclearized and went on to cause more headaches for Washington.
I remember bien-pensants comparing the Axis of Evil speech to Reagan's Evil Empire speech at the time, and thinking they were even stupider than Bush. The point about the Evil Empire speech was that the Soviet Union was both evil and an empire, but there was a legitimate argument about whether the leader of the free world shouting this from the rooftops was a good idea with nukes involved. The point about the Axis of Evil speech was that Iran, Iraq and North Korea were not an axis, and thinking they were should disqualify you from national security policymaking roles. But to treat both speeches primarily as examples of provocative American jingoism is to indicate that you don't care about the truth values of statements.
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