In the face of renewed criticism, Dick Cheney remains steadfast in his defense of the Bush Administration’s enhanced interrogation tactics – and pulls no punches about what he considers to be real torture:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney unapologetically pressed his defense of the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques Sunday, insisting that waterboarding and other such tactics did not amount to torture and that the spy agency’s actions paled in comparison to those of terrorists targeting Americans.
“Torture, to me … is an American citizen on his cellphone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York on 9/11,” Cheney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There’s this notion that there’s moral equivalence between what the terrorists did and what we do, and that’s absolutely not true. We were very careful to stop short of torture.”
Cheney also made the obvious point that our enemies aren’t using the careful techniques of our country’s spies, they’re simply butchering people:
Cheney also disputed the notion that any American taken prisoner overseas by terrorists was now at greater risk of being subjected to techniques like those used by the CIA.
“He’s not likely to be waterboarded. He’s likely to have his head cut off,” the former vice president said of a potential American taken hostage by a group like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “I haven’t seen them waterboard anybody.”
“I’d do it again in a minute,” he declared.
Asked if the report created “any seed of doubt” for him about the wisdom of the CIA effort, Cheney replied: “No … absolutely not.”
What do you think – was what the CIA did to get foreign prisoners to talk tantamount to torture? And do you think it was justified in the wake of 9-11?
