THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: Former US vice-president Dick Cheney says intelligence extracted from tough interrogations of suspected al-Qaeda militants had saved "perhaps hundreds of thousands" of US lives.
"No regrets. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do," he said on CBS television arguing that techniques decried by critics as torture were essential to break the resistance of captured extremists.
"I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of lives," Cheney said, arguing again that al-Qaeda was bent on attacking a US city with a nuclear device.
But at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents' Association late on Saturday, President Barack Obama skewered Cheney's doomsday view of the world for comic effect.
"Dick Cheney was supposed to be here but he is very busy working on his memoirs, tentatively titled How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People," he quipped.
In one of his first acts as president, Obama reversed predecessor George W Bush's approval of harsh interrogation methods such as "waterboarding", or simulated drowning.
Recently released memorandums detail the reasoning used by Bush administration lawyers to justify waterboarding and other techniques such as sleep deprivation, physical slaps and painful "stress positions".
Cheney reaffirmed his belief that Obama had made the US more vulnerable to attack, and condemned calls by Democratic lawmakers for the Bush legal officials to face prosecution. >>> AFP | Monday, May 11, 2009
