Eliza, the original posts to the thread were reasonably light-hearted, It was Joe's post which brought in the political torture element which, of course, is all too true.

My own post was in the spirit of the original.

As far as torture as persuasion (as opposed to punishment) is concerned, I'm always reminded of the competition between the sun and the wind to see which one could get a traveller to remove his coat. The wind huffed and puffed, but the traveller just wound his coat more tightly round himself. The sub beamed and poured sunshine on the traveller - who removed his coat to cool off.

I always thought that was a nice parable.