Assumption not in evidence. In some of the most egregious cases of torture under the recent administration — Abu Ghraib under Charles Graner and Lynndie England — there was no evidence that "people thought it's important". Therefore, that was not a requirement for the withdrawal of the restriction against torture. Therefore, the actual practice of torture (as opposed to the legal theory presented by, e.g. John Yoo) under the recent U.S. administration, appears to be better explained in terms of dehumanization of the victims as discussed by Rorty — not the "ticking time bomb" scenario of the legal theory. In gist, the culture or doctrine of the torturers declared that the victims were outside the moral consideration accorded to human beings; or even that their well-being was morally negative — that there was an obligation to cause them suffering. The torturers tortured not because they had weighed the consequences and judged that there was a positive expected outcome, but because they did not assign moral significance (or, indeed, assigned negative significance) to some of the humans involved in the outcome. They weren't running the Trolley Problem. They were running a variant where you get to push a horrible mockery of humankind in front of the trolley — and who cares if it saves real humans? (Why some cases of torture were later prosecuted and others have not yet been is a different question.)