Do you remember last year or the year before when he was trying to infiltrate a terror group? He brought a snitch in for questioning then cut his head off with a hack saw. It was great tv.Yeah, but that's kind of the problem. First, they had to establish that the snitch was the worst sort of criminal -- child killer and molester who was going to cop a plea to snitch. And, of course, the problem is extreme -- getting into a terrorist group that may have info. about an atomic bomb.
It'd be more interesting if occasionally Bauer was wrong. We do see examples in the real world where torture works -- the guy in Iraq who shot near the head of a captive in order to extract information about planned attack. But we also see torture and extreme measures used where clearly the person had no info (Abu Ghraib).
Sutherland says of Bauer that after he tortures he hopes that God will forgive him, but that Bauer ultimate realizes that God won't.
Plus there's a lot of fake moral dilemmas, like when the audience thinks he's murdered or tortured someone but it turns out to have been fake.
I watched Kiss Me Deadly (Mickey Spillane's classic Mike Hammer film) and have since watched Mickey Spillane himself AS Mike Hammer in The Girl Hunters. I found him surprisingly more brutal than the interpretation in KMD (especially since that really gets liberals irate).
SPOILER
In The Girl Hunters, Mike has become an alcoholic after several years after his girlfriend is killed. Turns out she's alive, at least for now. Mike gets a lead on the man who has her. The G-Men say tell Mike that they want that man ALIVE. Mike is ready to release is frustration on him but pulls his punches. At one point he is poised to drop something heavy (like an anvil) on the man's hand and then relents. He is in a barn and picks up a big metal spike and can be seen driving into the man's hand, nailing him to the floor. Mike calls the agent and tells him that the man is there and he's alive. This is late 1950s/early 1960s.