From what I understand, the waterboarding was never used to “force confessions.” That would be rather pointless. The intent was to extract actionable intelligence on ongoing terror plots, thus saving civilian lives.

I disagree with those who say the intent of those who approved and carried out the torture was “pure evil” or that we’re just as bad as our enemies for doing it, even as bad as the Nazis or Imperial Japanese. Did Hiroshima and Dresden make us “just as bad” as the Nazis and Imperial Japanese? In wars terrible things happen and decisions are made in the heat of the moment that may be regretted later. The Nazis and Imperial Japanese planned their innumerable atrocities in cold blood long before they actually launched hostilities, and they certainly weren’t going to feel guilty or try to make amends for them afterwards… in fact, if they had won the war, the atrocities, against the conquered populations and against their own people, were going to continue….perhaps on an even larger scale.

I’m sorry, I just can’t equate our use of torture in specific and limited situations, in the early years of a war that began when civilians were targeted and killed by the thousands by fanatic religious fascists, where the intent was to yield intelligence to prevent further large scale attacks on civilian targets, with the torture that is carried out on a daily basis by authoritarian regimes around the world, or the torture that was done by the Nazis or Imperial Japanese. It may have been wrong, but it is not the same. Murder is always wrong too, but we recognize different degrees of murder, and do not punish everyone the same way for killing another person.