Cheney: I OK'd Waterboarding

VP gave go ahead for 'remarkably successful' tactic
By Peter Fearon,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 16, 2008 4:00 AM CST

Vice President Dick Cheney personally approved using waterboarding to interrogate 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he reveals in a wide-ranging interview on ABC News. "I was  involved in helping get the process cleared. The agency came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," said Cheney, referring to waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques. "They talked to me to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."

He called the interrogations a "remarkably successful effort" with results that "speak for themselves." Asked specifically if he thought waterboarding was "appropriate," he responded: "I do." Yet, he added, "On the question of so-called torture, we don't do torture." The vice president also defends the invasion of Iraq, and supports continuing to operate the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities to keep terrorists off the battlefield. (More Dick Cheney stories.)

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