[ativzzz]

> It's bleakly amusing that you think torturers are worried about some sort of credibility calculus. Where torture is sanctioned or tolerated, people are sometimes tortured for information, sometimes for compliance - but those considerations are often excuses offered to justify the torture to external critics. In many cases, people are tortured purely in order to terrorize others into compliance, or because the torturers are sadists who get off on it.

They actually are in some ways. I toured a former secret East German prison in Berlin, and they would keep prisoners for a long time, and psychologically torture them until they confessed, and would then send them to "trial" with their confession as proof.

I asked the guide why they didn't just physically torture them or falsify the trial right off the bat and he answered something along the lines of the prison guards thinking they were civilized people and wouldn't resort to such barabarous manners.

Torturers are still people and have some level of cognitive dissonance going on, but do require some kind of credibility.