Torture and Liars

What's astounding to me is not the belligerent stupidity of a person willing to volunteer to be tortured but the fact that, even granting this kind of immense belligerent stupidity, these five-second waterboardees nonetheless admit afterwards that they were wrong. Wouldn't we expect them to go the other way, to retrench and insist it really wasn't that bad? It's an absolutely perfect opportunity for macho posturing, yet they demur. What's stopping people who lie in basically every aspect of their public lives from lying about this as well? It's weird.