imagine if a presidential candidate mentions how his will was broken by torture in Vietnam, and afterward it's revealed that all that happened was that he was told he might be tortured, so he spilled the beans immediately. I wouldn't expect his poll numbers to go up.

I would still say that torture was used to break his will. To say this would be accurate, if not precise (because I'm not specifying whether I mean a particular act or an institutionalized practice). Whether his will proved too easy to break to satisfy the electorate is another matter.