One of the things I learned looking into this is that there's a big difference between confessions ("I did it," "I'm a war criminal," "my country is an imperialist aggressor," etc.) and actual information ("There's an attack on Chicago planned," "My cell leader is...")

An amazing amount of torture in places like Vietnam was about the former category. What we have done to prisoners is almost always about the latter. As far as I know, we have put no prisoners in front of cameras and forced them to read letters about how bad al Qaeda sucks.

"Confessions" are pretty much useless, and often not even objectively verifiable or legally useful in a trial. What good would it have been in terms of public safety if bin Laden had been captured and the only information we got from him was a confession that he had planned 9/11? Hell, he confessed to that anyway.

Obviously, information still needs to be confirmed (that can be faked, too) but leads of this kind obtained a few years back did turn out to be useful, and in an ongoing crisis, any lead can turn out to be solid gold when time is a factor.