Former US Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in an interview on ‘Fox News’ that the Justice Department’s review of waterboarding and other enhanced CIA interrogation methods is a political move.
Cheney has expressed his opposition to Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to ask a former prosecutor to probe the CIA’s interrogations of suspected terrorists.
Cheney also stated that President Obama was the one who instructed Holder in the launch of this review, following pressure coming from left-wing Democrats, and continued to criticise Obama for allowing a review after promising there would be no prosecution against CIA agents involved in the interrogations.
These statements followed last week’s revelations of unauthorised interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists in a 2004 inspector general’s report, which included threats, “blowing cigar smoke, employing certain stress positions, the use of a stiff brush on a detainee, and stepping on a detainee’s ankle shackles.”
One key point about the argument is whether the interrogation methods actually resulted in information leading to the prevention of subsequent terrorist attacks. No direct link has been found, though Cheney asserted that the non-occurrence of another terrorist attack on America since 9-11 is enough proof.
Says Cheney, “I think the evidence is overwhelming that the enhanced interrogation techniques persuaded them to cooperate,” further adding, “How do you explain that? The critics don’t have any solution for that. They criticise our policy, our way of doing business, but the results speak for themselves.”
Cheney stated that the interrogation methods “were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives, in preventing further attacks against the United States, in giving us the intelligence we needed to go find al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed.”
