[ I've never understood how water board is torture or unendurable... It's the desire to breathe an adequate amount of air right? When they can't get enough air they have reflex and try to avoid the feeling of "drowning" or "choking"..? Can you explain water boarding? ]

You basically described it. It simulates the panic of drowning, and of course, if you’re in the custody of people who’s intent you don’t know, it works even better.
All torture is mental, the physical injury with most torture is just a means to an end.
With that in mind, waterboarding starts right in with psychology without the need to injure the subject.

I was whiskey boarded as a cherry in the barracks. Same concept, except a handle of jack instead of water. And trust me, it sucks massive dick, and it does induce panic, as I said, I can only imagine it’s even worse if you’re bagged and shuffled around and find yourself in a dimly lit connex with a couple of pissed off meat eaters who “soften you up” first before strapping you to a board and simulate-drown you.

I would say waterboarding probably does meet muster for “torture” - that said, I don’t rightly give a rats dick if we torture non-uniformed, non-state combatants who engage uniformed forces and civilians as an insurgency or terror force.

IMO, any captured EPW should be soft interrogated, and those determined to potentially posses useful intelligence should have the shit tortured out of them until they let it slip. Many will tell complete falsehoods to make the torture end, those people should be tortured further, until dead, in front of the next schmuck in line. Some one will eventually give us something we can use.

If we save one civilian or Soldier’s life, I couldn’t rightly give a fuck if tortured every EPW to death and then shot his dog to get the AI.