dare I suggest that one area of relevant expertise is normative philosophy for-@#%(^^$-sake?!

As someone who has studied moral philosophy for many years, I would like to point out that I agree with Robin and Eliezer, and that I know many professional moral philosophers who would agree with them, too, if presented with this moral dilemma. It is also worth noting that, many comments above, Gaverick Matheny provided a link to a paper by a professional moral philosopher, published in one of the two most prestigious moral philosophy journals in the English-speaking world, which defends essentially the same conclusion. And as the argument presented in that paper makes clear, the conclusion that one should torture need not be motivated by a theoretical commitment to some substantive thesis about the nature of pain or aggregation (as Godwer claims), but follows instead by transitivity from a series of comparisons that everyone--including those who deny that conclusion--finds intuitively plausible.