"in NO WAY equivocates as torture"

I think the word you are after there is equate - but "equivocate" is quite a good word to use when you are trying to argue that what happened in Abu Ghraib was not torture. (And remember, there are recorded cases of two prisoners dying in the course of interogation by US operatives in the prison.)

However there appears to be evidence that some of what appears to be pre-interrogation softening-up shown in the pictures, really needs to be seen in the context of what happens in US prisons back home - there's a passage in this story that is relevant here:

"A chilling story in last Saturday's New York Times made plain that the humiliations depicted in the Abu Ghraib pictures are regularly practised in domestic American prisons. The reporter, Fox Butterfield, dug up examples of hooding, stripping naked and forced sex inflicted by guards in jails in Arizona, Utah, Virginia and Texas. At least two of the American soldiers due to be court-martialled are reservists who are "corrections officers" in civilian life, and it seems likely that in Baghdad they were indulging in sadistic amusements perfected back home in the US."