I think it makes sense to recognise torture as one of the methods people adopt as a way of avoiding blame when things go wrong.

What I mean is, once you are operating in a context where torture (whatever it may be officially called) is accepted practice, then an officer who fails to adopt it is liable to be blamed for not doing everything they could. If the torture fails to produce any useful information that doesn't really matter, because the bottom line wasn't getting useful information,it was avoiding blame.

It's rather like a school adopting over-extreme safety procedures. The basic aim isn't to preotect teh childten, it's to protect the school and the staff from blame and litigation if something does go wrong.