So far I have been speaking of evil as something done to me. But it is also something done by me. As none of us has a life in which no evil befalls him, none of us has a life in which he does no evil. The worm is in my rose too. In each of us, somewhere, are the feelings that, improperly developed, can produce the torturer, the killer, the ravisher, the sadist. And always, to some small extent at least, I allow those feelings play. At least part of the answer to the question of evil lies within me. And yet I almost always perceive that evil as coming from outside. Seldom does anyone admit that he is evil; seldom does he even admit that he does evil. One of the great dangers to humanity is our tendency to project our own evil onto others.
(Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity [Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1977], 22 [italics in original])
Note from KBJ: I'm starting to think that some of the "disagreement" about torture stems from the ambiguity of the term. Torture is the infliction of severe pain on a sentient being. It can be done for various purposes, such as extracting a confession or eliciting information, but it can also be done wantonly (for the sheer sadistic pleasure of it). The debate about torture is not about sadistic torture. Everyone agrees that it's wrong to inflict severe pain on a sentient being for the sheer pleasure of it. The debate is about whether the infliction of severe pain is worse (morally speaking) than the alternative of allowing innocent people to be killed. Absolutists say that nothing is as bad (morally) as inflicting severe pain. Nonabsolutists say that, however bad the infliction of severe pain is, something is worse, namely, allowing innocents to suffer and die. Nobody, in short, thinks that torture is a good thing. Everybody thinks it's a bad thing, even a very bad thing. The disagreement is about whether it's the worst thing.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 