Yes, We Did Execute Japanese Soldiers for Waterboarding American POWs

[Man from Pickens]

It stuns me that we are still having a debate, as a country, over whether or not what the Bush Administration did to detainees in the war on terror was actually torture. I would hope that this helps settle things. The fact-checking outfit called PolitiFact confirms that a McCain statement from 2007, dredged up recently by Paul Begala, is accurate:

"I forgot to mention last night that following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding," [McCain] told reporters at a campaign event.

....
You can argue that the techniques used by Americans on detainees were necessary and, because of the OLC memos, legal. I would disagree with you, but you could plausibly make that argument. What you cannot do any longer is pretend that those techniques do not meet the definition of torture that America has used in the past.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/04/yes-we-did-execute-japanese-soldiers-waterboarding-american-pows

There you have it. "Waterboarding" was such a despicable act as to classify it as a war crime deserving execution. Anyone who says it's not torture is an ignoramus at best, with the other end of the scale being "genuine war criminal".