Star Trek And Torture

The new movie has a stock torture scenario apparently. The show had a more interesting take in 1992:

In a last-ditch attempt to break Picard, the Cardassian interrogator offers him a choice: Either state that there are five lights and enjoy a life of comfort, or insist that there are four and prepare for more torture. Before Picard can answer, two Cardassian guards enter and reveal that the Enterprise has brokered the captain's release. "There are four lights!" Picard shouts, in what seems like a triumph. Later, though, he admits to a fellow officer that he was on the brink of succumbing: "I would have told him anything. Anything at all. But more than that, I believed that I could see five lights."

How strongly did Cheney believe in the al Qaeda-Saddam connection? Strongly enough to torture this "truth" out of a human being under his total control.