I'm not presenting that as an 'argument', piss poor or otherwise (although cheers for the erudite post about...nothing). I'm sure if you trolled the Gestapo or Stasi etc archives you could find thousands of examples where torture turned up trumps, but who is to say any of those examples were 'non-cooperative'?? The fact that they gave up information would suggest they were cooperative. Via coercion.
It doesn't work on everyone. If you are going to lower your moral stamding to condone torture, any rational person would hope at least that
a. you're certain that the person about to be tortured actually has information worth torturing him for; and
b. you're certain the torture will work.
Or maybe I'm just too 'left wing huggy fluffy'. Or just not American.