It has been known for a long time that torture is a desperately inefficient way of obtaining information as eventually the one being tortured will say whatever the torturer wants to hear, with no regard for the truth, just to make the suffering stop. It is, of course, a highly efficient method of eliciting confession to any crime under the sun. That's why it remains popular in China and Egypt, among many other places.
Torture is barbaric and has no place in a civilised society. America is signed up to the Geneva Conventions and other international laws repudiating torture. (Note, however, that America is not signed up to the International Court of Justice.) Calling torture "stress techniques of interrogation" or any other mealy mouthed weaselly term doesn't change the nature of it. "You can put a cat in the oven, but it still don't make a biscuit".