As someone who has suffered from sleep deprivation due to problems with imsomnia, I can tell you that it's torture even when it's not being inflicted by other people. I've never been subjected to sensory deprivation, but I have a hard time coping when the electricity goes out for a few hours, so the idea of having no sensory stimulation at all, for hours or even days, kind of scares me. The fact that noone is having their fingernails pulled out doesn't change the fact that physical suffering is being induced when people are deprived of sleep or sensory stimulation, and that it's being done to break a person down emotionally so they'll say whatever an interrogator wants them to. Even if what they say to stop the torture isn't true, as often turns out to be the case. And even if they have nothing to tell because they're completely innocent.
The fact that we're even being forced to discuss whether or not sleep deprivation, or sensory deprivation, or waterboarding (what they used to call "water torture" before Bush & co. started papering over techniques like these with Orwellian buzzwords) are torture is a sad sign of how far we have fallen as a nation and as a people. We may never get back to the moral authority we once had on issues like this, but if we do, it'll be a long time, and a lot of people will suffer horribly in the interim.
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