I would have no problems authorizing or doing such things myself.

That was one of the points I made in the post.

Right now, the vast majority of people who are activists on this issue define all those things you list as "torture." This is how people destroy a concept so it no longer has a unique meaning, and becomes whatever somebody says it is at any given time.

This is the CIA list of the harshest techniques used on about a dozen high-value prisoners. Later information had waterboarding used on three of them. All of these methods, of course, have now been defined as "torture," and inseparable in the discussion from bone-breaking, flaying and burning.

So by this the United States has apparently been damned forever in the eyes of a world which, frankly, has damn little to teach the U.S. about morality and human rights.