Cheney Defends Torture Out of Fear of His Arrest

Cheney Defends Torture: It Would Have Been Unethical Or Immoral For Us Not To Torture
Cheney admitted to personally approving the torture of high-profile detainees. In a new interview with the Washington Times, Cheney stridently defended the Bush administrations torture policies, saying, I feel very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do. He added emphatically that he would do exactly the same thing again.

Most audaciously, Cheney specifically defended the morality of torture, suggesting that it would have been immoral for the United States to not torture:

In my mind, the foremost obligation we had from a moral or an ethical standpoint was to the oath of office we took when we were sworn in, on January 20 of 2001, to protect and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. And thats what weve done, he said. []

I think it would have been unethical or immoral for us not to do everything we could in order to protect the nation against further attacks like what happened on 9/11, Mr. Cheney said.

Cheney insisted that the torture policies he helped craft were directly responsible for the fact that weve been able to avoid or defeat further attacks against the homeland for 7 1/2 years.

Torture has endangered, not protected, American lives. Military experts say that the U.S.s torture policies have been the single greatest recruiting tool for al Qaeda. A former interrogator who worked in Iraq stated unequivocally, The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.

Rather than keeping us safe, former FBI special agent Jack Cloonan warned that Cheneys torture policies will lead directly to another domestic terrorist attack:

Based on my experience in talking to Al Qaida members, I am persuaded that revenge in the form of a catastrophic attack on the homeland is coming; that a new generation of jihadist martyrs, motivated in part by the images from Abu Ghraib, is, as we speak, planning to kill Americans; and that nothing gleaned from the use of coercive interrogation techniques will be of any significant use in forestalling this calamitous eventuality.

Cheney appeared unconcerned about the possibility of being held legally responsible for what many are calling an admission of war crimes. He insisted that waterboarding was not torture, and explained, We spent a great deal of time and effort getting legal advice. However, speaking on MSNBC last night, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said, You cant just suddenly change something that is illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer write an opinion that saying its legal.
Waterboarding is a form of torture[1][2] that consists of immobilizing the victim on his or her back with the head inclined downwards, and then pouring water over the face and into the breathing passages. By forced suffocation and inhalation of water the subject experiences drowning and is caused to believe they are about to die.[3] It is considered a form of torture by legal experts,[4][5] politicians, war veterans,[6][7] intelligence officials,[8] military judges,[9] and human rights organizations.[10][11] As early as the Spanish Inquisition it was used for interrogation purposes, to punish and intimidate, and to force confessions.[12]
In the war crimes tribunals that followed Japan's defeat in World War II, the issue of waterboarding was sometimes raised. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for waterboarding a U.S. civilian. Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

"All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators," writes Evan Wallach in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.President Obama on Tuesday left open the possibility of criminal prosecution for Bush administration officials who drew up the legal basis for interrogation techniques that many view as torture.


President Obama says any congressional investigation should be conducted in a bipartisan fashion.

Obama said it will be up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether or not to prosecute the former officials.

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[grampadeal]

You sir, are an idiot. Torture doesn't work, so why use it? Go back and watch Fox News you ignorant twat.

[gajeebant]

Disgusting.

How can any civilised society do this? No better than animals.

[grafikfeat]

Pro Water Borders... Try it and get back to us. That is... Have it done to you. Your attitude will change. Quickly.

[trakkaton]

266 ticking time bombs were stopped just in the last minute, I guess.

US = fascist empire.

[Patrick5009]

it doesn't matter about the details. You just dont torture. Once you torture you are not the good guys. In WW2 England was bombed every night for years yet German POWs were still not tortured because it is about right and wrong. Cheeney is a disgusting man and must be prosecuted for allowing this.

[crazyzabo]

Bad legal advise does not excuse one for commiting crimes. And, this should seem pretty obvious. Waterboarding torture is hardly a grey or unclear area of law.

Shame on the culprits and the footdraggers!!

[BazzNewYork]

Americans don't have the courage to prosecute their own members of the government when they do those kinds of things. But they are going to pay dearly for tolerating criminals in their government to get off scot-free.

Americans’ own government is going to do them what it has been doing to others around the world. When this Country hits rock bottom they are going to in their sorrow wonder how could we have become so low? What did we do to cause us to lose our liberty?

[undeadpresident]

Torture is nothing new. Try getting drugged for months at a time while receiving electroshocks to your brain and listening to repetitive messages until you don't know who you are anymore or even how to use the bathroom. How many of you knew that this is what the US government did to random, innocent people under the MKULTRA program. The USA is an abomination, you are all ignorant sheep because you persecute those who speak the truth.

[Josephandalice]

Not only we should have water boared we should chop off a hand if its going to get them to talk. America needs to stop being nice and really start kicking ass

[caseyspaos]

@dlwke2

When the soldiers are an enemy of the U.S. they are "terrorist trash". When the soldiers are American they are "our young men and women in uniform". Are all Americans as brainwashed and cold-hearted as you?

[dlwke2]

suchaNoob, are you a plant meant to make liberals look like idiots? If so, you're doing a great job. You're basing your national security beliefs on lame, cliched tv shows written by liberals in Hollywood? Your screen name suits you. You couldn't have found a more apt description of yourself.

[dlwke2]

madJedi1, your "mad" name suits you, but you would be beffer off as idiotJedi. I hope our CIA waterboards and does whatever they have to do to get information from this terrorist trash. They should do whatever they have to do, and should not have to make public exactly what they're doing with these high level Al Qaeda terrorists. They could rip off these terrorists' limbs, for all I care, if it means they'd get more information. Are all men in the UK as much of a wuss as you obviously are?