If you woudn't want it to happen to you, or someone you love, it's torture.

No, see? That's crap. I wouldn't want my jailers to keep the lights on all night, either. That doesn't make it torture.

The "physical pain" line is better, but nobody seems to be willing to put the bar even that high. And at what point does "discomfort" count? You've gone further in thinking this through than a vast majority of other liberals who seem to be satisfied with the bar "anything that makes a prisoner unhappy." Including rock music.

Incidentally, the reason I am pointing out how our enemies treat our troops is NOT to say "See? That makes it okay."

The reason is to crush, once and for all, the stupid idea that how we treat our prisoners makes one damn bit of difference in how they treat ours. It hasn't for over half a century. There's a reason our troops are trained to resist these methods and have been for many years. It is routinely assumed they will be used on us.

Again, and I seem to have some difficulty getting this critical point across, at the time these methods were approved, it was by a lot of politicians who are riding their high horse now.