Cheney says waterboarding was appropriate

Vice President Cheney said the waterboarding of terrorist
suspects was appropriate and that none of the methods used to get information
from top al Qaeda members went too far.

In a sweeping interview with ABC News, Cheney argued that
the Bush administration’s policies in the war on terror have been “crucial” to
keeping the country safe.

{mosads}“We’ve been able to defeat or disrupt all further
attempts to strike the homeland,” Cheney stated. “It’s enormously important.”

The administration has been heavily criticized at home
and abroad for approving harsh interrogation methods that some call torture,
authorizing warrantless wiretapping and keeping suspected terrorists
indefinitely without charging them.

“On the question of so-called ‘torture,’ we don’t do
torture, we never have. It’s not something that this administration
subscribes to,” the vice president said. “Again, we proceeded very cautiously;
we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order
to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals
involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn’t do
anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was
legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong.”

Cheney added that the “results speak for themselves” with
regard to the interrogations program.

The vice president argued that it would be “very
unfortunate” if the incoming administration were to roll back some of the
programs.

“I think it’s vital that they sit down and — which I
believe they’re doing — and look at the specific threat that’s out there to
understand these programs and how they operate, and see the extent to which we
were very cautious in terms of how we put them together — and then make a
decision based on that with respect to whether or not they’re going to
continue,” Cheney stated. “They shouldn’t just fall back on campaign rhetoric
to make these very fundamental decisions about the safety of the nation.”

The vice president lauded President-elect Obama’s
national security team. While noting that he “would not have hired” Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as secretary of state, Cheney praised her as
tough and smart.

He also discussed the economic situation, saying he does
not believe that a massive second stimulus is necessary to help the economy.

“It’s not clear to me that it would have any short-term
effect,” Cheney said. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t things that could be done
on some of these longer-term projects, but I think caution is in order
here. And to date, I have not seen the proposals, I haven’t seen the
arguments for why this is appropriate, or why it would be good economic policy
at this time.”