I was trying to say that you were thinking OTHERS in this thread were arguing that torture is ok, but it is not what they were saying.

As to the guilty or not, does it matter - as you say and in my opinion, torture is not a valid method to determine guilt or facts of any kind, as the victim of the torture will probably end up confessing even if they are not guilty, just to stop the torture.
I also do not know if they were guilty of anything, as I have not studied the case in any detail, and do not have the knowledge of the cases to form an opinion, and in any case it would be an opinion, not the truth.

The point I was trying to make is that no-one disagrees with you on your point of torture being bad.

Nobody in this thread has suggested torture is ok in any way for any reason.

The point made was that there are separate issues being ignored because they are not popular issues, such as internet privacy. So ACLU is focusing on issues people will be vocal about, and understand such as torture, rather then issues people don't really understand such as internet privacy.

I think they should focus on both issues, but the original poster thinks they are not focused on the online privacy issue.

I was not saying you believed in torture, but that you understood the original poster as arguing that torture is ok to save the majority. I was trying to point out that the original poster was not making this point, but that the ACLU should be focusing on issues that are affecting the majority of the population such as online privacy, rather then going for the political points of the torture issue.

I don't think anyone involved in this thread was arguing that torture is ok if it means that the majority is kept safe, but rather that there are other issues that do not "score points" that they are missing, that are actually quite serious and effect pretty much everyone directly.

I believe the point was the ACLU should focus on an issue that effects the whole population (the story topic of a group of companies trying to control the internet in the name of "IP") rather then focus on a issue effecting a small number of people (torture/waterboarding).
As opposed to the way you seem to take the argument that torture of a few is ok to save the majoritiy (which is not what the quote you gave expressed, but I can see how you could get that from the statement).