Torture, indeed, like enslavement, has traditionally been iconic of pure evil, the practice of a Sauron or a Saddam Hussein.
2013, Douglas V. Porpora, Alexander G. Nikolaev, Julia Hagemann May, & Alexander Jenkins, Post-Ethical Society: The Iraq War, Abu Ghraib, and the Moral Failure of the Secular, University of Chicago Press, published 2013, page 196