The thing is, as the guy quoted in that story comments, torture is not a good way to get accurate information.

But then that's not really what it's about. The real purpose is to break the people who are tortured, and to terrorise their possible sympathisers, and to create a kind of bond of blood brotherhood between the torturers and those who authorise them.

When the torturers in Chile tried out all the techniques they had been taught in the School of the Americas, they weren't primarily trying to get information; and nor were the torturers in the Castlereigh, or in the Securité, or Putin's friends in the KGB...And the list goes on. They were engaged in terror, licensed by those above them.

Essentially, torture is a form of terrorism, whoever does it - just as terrorism is a form of torture. Sometimes it's individuals who are tortured, sometimes it's communities, sometimes it's whole peoples.