points:
1. There has never been prove that torturing does not work either. What we have seen here are isolated cases of failed attempts and some media glorified misbehavior of soldiers. I am sure Mossad have tonnes of success stories that they are not going to share with you.
2. Everyone keeps saying that keep wars out of talking about terrorist and torturing, let me give two simple example:
a. You are in a battle field in Afganistan. In the midst of a combat you have captured two enemy soldier. They are now POW.
You asked them: where is your bunker? where is the machine gun?
You need these information to continue your attack and help prevent further casualty in your camp.
Do you:
i. ask them very nicely under the geneva convention for answer, respect their wish not to provide the answer.
ii. take the butt of your rifle and beat the hell out of them. using techniques that are most painful and yet does not kill.
b. You are in the city of somewhere.
You have some unproven information that there will be an attack on the city tomorrow the 4th july. You happened to capture a suspected terrorist with weapons.
Do you:
i. hold them in the cell nicely and wait for them to yield.
ii. beat the hell out of them, or some electrocuting of their limbs, or whatever that works, to force them to provide information that you might be able to save lives tomorrow (if the attack is real).
Tell me how absurd these cases are. And then tell me if you are there sitting and worrying about the safety of your soldiers and your people, which mean would you choose ?
In your two scenarios freeier, what assurances are there that the information gleaned from torturing the captives is accurate?
In the first scenario, the pows could give information have will ensure an ambush. In the second, the alleged terrorist could give a false address leading to an inappropriate use of resources which are taken from more likely sites.
Is these situations, did torture work? Yes, information was obtained. No, the information obtained was false.
The first is a battlefield situation so not relevant to this discussion.
The second, oh come on when was the last time a terrorist with weapons was captured on the eve of an attack. As you say absurd examples. In that case, highly unlikely that it is, I would bend the rules.
Let's take a real one though. You are hunting Irish terrorists, funded by Americans lets not forget, and you find an Irishman who once drank with some people who knew some people suspected of being somehow linked to terrorists. You do some tests and lo and behold there are traces of explosives on his fingers (years later these tests also unfortunately were found to also prove positive if you had handled playing cards). So you beat the shit out of him and use mental torture. You finally get him to confess and name some other people. Unfortunately all were innocent but spent years in prison. Meanwhile of course the real terrorists are not hunted down and are left free to carry on bombing and shooting because torture got the wrong ones. So not only was torture used on innocent people it also allowed the guilty to carry on their activities. Everyone suffers. I may actually be mixing up any of several such cases into one story, but the facts are still there.