Cheney: Waterboarding Saved Thousands Of American Lives

By Jonathan Bronstein, Talk Radio News Service

Former VP Dick Cheney

Rushed to a secret White House bunker on September 11, 2001, former Vice President Dick Cheney watched coordinated terrorist attacks unfold before his eyes.

“I’ll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities,” said Cheney today at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

In the days following 9-11, Congress passed a Joint Resolution that gave the President and other high ranking officials the power to act with “all necessary and appropriate force” to protect America, according to Cheney.

This meant the Bush Administration would use all tactics at their disposal to ensure the country’s safety, including the allowance of waterboarding against suspected terrorists and an offensive war to disrupt terrorist activities.

Cheney bluntly stated that the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques were “legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.”

Cheney defended the 183 instances of waterboarding employed by the CIA on Kaled Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks.

“American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people,” said Cheney.

Waterboarding was not used against every enemy combatant, but “only those terrorists of the highest intelligence value,” said Cheney.

However, Cheney asserted that high-ranking members of Congress were briefed on the CIA’s use of these techniques, including the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D Calif.). He criticized those members of Congress who demanded to be briefed saying that “they support them in private, and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy.”

In response to Pelosi’s assertion that the CIA lied to her, Cheney stated that “people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about ‘values.’”

Pelosi has been one of the harshest critics of the Bush Administration and a leading advocate for a ‘Truth Commission.’

“It’s hard to imagine a worse precedent, filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse, than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessors,” said Cheney in regards to such a commission.

Cheney wants the government to release all torture documents, and he mocked the Obama Administration’s choice to only partially release these documents when he said that “the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.”

“Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of the specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place,” said Cheney.

Additionally, Cheney asserted that no matter what actions the Obama Administration takes, like the closing Guantanamo Bay or disallowing the use of enhanced interrogation, the terrorists will continue to hate America.

“The terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by,” said Cheney.