Then why the Senate Study to prove what is already known historically?
I would say that torture is just an extreme version of coercion and or intimidation which seeks to force people to do things INCLUDING extracting the answer you want; however, that does not mean that you will not get any truthful answers.
The history of coercion and or intimidation shows that people can be forced to do what they otherwise would not INCLUDING revealing information.
The definition of torture rather than being the extreme has evolved to include what is not actually in the extreme including the "more effective, less distasteful methods" you suggest are the alternative.
The Democrats are working to score political points. That is nearly always true in everything they do. That said, torture isn’t effective.
Imagine a situation where I tell you 100 things. You now have to chase every thread to be certain which of those 100 things are true. That’s a waste of time and money. Of which the government has too much.
As long as a nation has an intelligence service that service can be fooled and they often are. Keep in mind that the US intelligence services collect an immense amount of data that in hindsight pointed to the attacks of 9/11. They didn’t prevent it. Raw data isn’t the problem. Sorting it is.
Good intelligence operators know that finding a reliable source with actionable intelligence is finding the needle. Should we really be using torture to collect the haystack?