[Infowarrior] - Cheney admits authorizing detainee's torture

[Richard Forno]

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

Outgoing VP says Guantanamo prison should stay open until end of  
terror war, but has no idea when that might be.

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.

"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."

This video is from ABC's World News, broadcast Dec. 15, 2008.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Cheney_admits_authorizing_detainees_torture_1215.html