Dick Cheney Says CIA Interrogation Tactics Were Not Torture: ‘I’d Do It Again In A Minute’ [Video]

Former Vice President Dick Cheney denies the enhanced interrogation tactics used by CIA interrogators after 9/11 were torture. In an interview Sunday, Cheney maintained the controversial interrogation techniques stopped short of the true definition of torture.

In his defense of the techniques used against CIA detainees after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Cheney said, “I’d do it again in a minute.”

Dick Cheney’s comments on Meet the Press Sunday come after the release of a report earlier this week by Senate Democrats, who conducted a three-year investigation into interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay and secret detention facilities across the world after 9/11.

As Yahoo! News reports, Cheney told host Chuck Todd the enhanced interrogation techniques used were not what he would consider torture. Cheney said his definition of torture is “an American citizen on a cell phone making a last call to his four younger daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York City on 9/11.”

Cheney said the Senate report is “seriously flawed.”

“They didn’t talk to anybody who knew anything about the program. They didn’t talk to anybody within the program. The best guide for what in fact happened is the one that was produced by the three CIA directors and deputy directors of the CIA when this program was undertaken.”

Although the Senate report suggests former President George W. Bush was not aware of the detention and interrogation techniques then in use, Cheney says otherwise, according to CNN.

“All of the techniques that were authorized by the president were, in effect, blessed by the Justice Department opinion that we could go forward with those without, in fact, committing torture.”

Although 25 percent of detainees were later found to be innocent, Cheney insists the detention and interrogation program worked.

“I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective… to get the guys who did 9/11, and it is to avoid another attack against the United States. We’ve avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States. And we did capture Bin Laden. We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys at al-Qaida who were responsible for that attack on 9/11. I’d do it again in a minute.”

The 520-page report released by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee says the CIA’s interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, rectal hydration, beatings, and sleep deprivation, were far more brutal than previously acknowledged, and did not produce useful intelligence.

Dick Cheney maintained those CIA operatives who employed these enhanced interrogation techniques are heroes, and are to be praised and decorated.