Waterboarding was always considered to be torture, the only time it wasn't "legally" considered such in the US was because of one person, John Woo, who redefined torture while working at the DoJ. This was in 2002 and all of his memos were fully disregarded by 2004.

This was a government lawyer who openly admitted his belief that the president could crush the testicles of a child of someone suspected of a crime and it wouldn't be torture.

Waterboarding was always considered torture before and after John Woo, and just because he muddied the legal definition in the US for a brief period of time, every competent person on the planet was aware that waterboarding is torture.