I don't believe for one moment that torture never works but I respect your position. I suspect the reality is many western governments have made use of methods that could be loosely defined as torture mostly through third parties with varying degrees of success.
Does it? Are you sure? What do you base that opinion on?
Expanding on your hypothetical scenarios. What about water boarding x 1 revealing vital information leading to saving thousands of lives .. worth it?
What he actually said ..
"I think sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and I think these people are incarcerated because they are bad people, OK? And they want to do us harm.
"If waterboarding ensures that we save a number of lives in this country or in America because someone admits...