When a person is subjected to significant physical or psychological pain in the attempt to elicit information, there may come a point where he or she is willing to give false but persuasive information simply to end the agony. For some victims, that point may be reached quickly, whereas others might be tortured for prolonged periods before they reach it. Regardless of what intensity or duration of pain is needed to bring them to that point, it is likely that most people could be harmed enough to say something so that the suffering will cease.
Suppose that two factions are engaged in open combat. One side, seeking military intelligence, captures several enemy combatants. The war captives are tortured in an effort to force them to explain the locations and plans of their group. Not only is any information they give not guaranteed to be true, but it could also result in greater loss. War captives who are tortured into betraying the locations of their fellow soldiers might tell their torturers what they want to hear even if it is false, and acting upon the information could lead to more gratuitous deaths. The attempt to secure information via torture can backfire.
Furthermore, a torture victim might be so traumatized by his or her suffering that they are no longer aware of whether or not they are divulging true or deceptive information. Someone could genuinely be so overwhelmed by pain that their memories and communicative abilities are affected, meaning that they might give answers with little grasp of what they are actually saying, much less whether or not it is true. If torturing someone for information is itself evil, it does not matter how successful it might be. However, as the previous points demonstrate, there is a major pragmatic flaw with abusing someone in order to learn the contents of their mind.
There are only a few tortures allowed/prescribed by the Bible, and none of them are related to the extraction of information. In fact, the Biblical requirement of two or three witnesses for criminal sentencing excludes forced confessions of guilt, something comparable to torture for the sake of obtaining military intelligence (or any other kind of knowledge). Outside of a small range of scenarios where the infliction of physical pain is used as a just penalty for particular offenses, torture is an illicit, atrocious activity. The utilitarian goal of acquiring information cannot justify torture, irrespective of who the victim is. Still, the results of doing this are up in the air even whenever ethics is set aside.
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