Cheney admits
authorizing detainee's torture
David Edwards and Stephen C.
Webster
Published:
Monday December 15, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Cheney_admits_authorizing_detainees_torture_1215.html
Monday, outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney made a startling
statement on a nation-wide, televised broadcast.
When asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl whether he approved
of interrogation tactics used against a so-called "high value
prisoner" at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison, Mr. Cheney,
in a break from his history of being press-shy, admitted to giving
official sanctioning
of torture.
"I supported it," he said regarding the practice known as
"water-boarding," a form of simulated drowning. After World War II,
Japanese soldiers were tried and
convicted of war crimes in US courts for water-boarding,
a practice which the outgoing Bush administration attempted to
enshrine in policy.
"I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get
the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to
know what they could and couldn't do," Cheney said. "And they
talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do.
And I supported it."
He added: "It's been a remarkably successful effort, and I think
the results speak for themselves."
ABC asked him if in hindsight he thought the tactics went too far.
"I don't," he said.
The prisoner in question, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the Bush
administration alleges to have planned the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, is one of Guantanamo's "high value targets" thus far charged with war
crimes.
Former military interrogator Travis Hall disagrees with Cheney's
position.
"Proponents of Guantanamo underestimate what a powerful a
propaganda tool Guantanamo has become for terrorist groups such as
Al Qaeda, despite several Department of Defense studies documenting
the propaganda value of detention centers," he said in a column for
Opposing
Views.
"For example, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center has monitored
numerous Al Qaeda references to Guantanamo in its recruitment
propaganda materials," continued Hall. "Improvements to
Guantanamo’s administration of judicial mechanisms will not make
its way into Al Qaeda propaganda. Nothing short of closing
Guantanamo will remove this arrow from its quiver."
President-elect Barack Obama has promised to close the
prison and pull US forces out of Iraq. Cheney, however,
has a different timeline for when Guantanamo Bay prison may be
"responsibly" retired.
"Well, I think that that would come with the end of the war on
terror," he told ABC.
Problematic to his assertion: Mr. Bush's "war on terror" is
undefinable and unending by it's very nature, and Cheney seems to
recognize this as fact.
Asked when his administration's terror war will end, he jostled,
"Well, nobody knows. Nobody can specify that."
