Is it torture if the individual could die, be permanently injured, or endured significant pain? or

Is it torture if the individual is scared s******* during the procedure, even though the individual is in no danger of being injured or killed?

Those who have voluntarily endured water boarding as an experiment or out of curiosity are not credible in their assessment of the procedure, as they had nothing at stake. They knew the procedure would be terminated as soon as they said it would be, and thus had full control of the situation.

When time is of the essence to acquire information valuable to save lives and prevent additional victims of terrorism, debating with a terrorist or criminal over opinions on morality and/or politics is rarely successful due to the immorality of the terrorist/criminal and/or zealot-like political stance and the time window of need for the imfornation. So, non-lethal, non-injurious but darned-right frightening procedures are applied to "get the information" before more deaths/injuries occur from further terrorist/criminal actions.

In a perfect world, the captured individual would simply say, "Okay, you got me, here's everything I know so that no one else becomes a casualty." Unfortunately, the "perfect" scenario doesn't exist.