Dick Cheney Calls For CIA To Restart Bush-Era Enhanced Interrogation Program, A.K.A. Torture

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said during an interview with Fox Business Thursday that the CIA should restart the controversial enhanced interrogation program used during the George W. Bush administration.

“If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs. I’d have them active and ready to go,” Cheney said. “And I’d go back and study them and learn.”

Cheney has long defended the post-9/11 interrogation program, saying it was necessary to keep the nation safe.

“I think the techniques we used were not torture. A lot of people try to call it that, but it wasn’t deemed torture at the time,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “People want to go back and try to rewrite history, but if it were my call, I’d do it again.”

“You tell me that the only method we have is ‘please, please, pretty please, tell us what you know?’ Well, I don’t buy that,” Cheney added.

The Hill added:

The Senate outlawed the use of torture and other brutal interrogation techniques like waterboarding and “rectal feeding” in 2015.

The move followed a scathing, 6,700-page report released by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee that detailed the brutal treatment of prisoners in the CIA’s former interrogation programs.

Cheney’s comment came during the Gina Haspel’s difficult confirmation process for CIA director.

“I think she’d be a great CIA director,” Cheney said of President Trump’s nominee. “I think she’s done a great job in terms of the career she’s built, and the people I know at the agency are very enthusiastic about having one of their own, so to speak, in the driver’s seat at the CIA.”

Appearing before lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Haspel vowed that she would not bring back enhanced interrogation techniques despite Trump saying in the past that “torture works.”

Dick Cheney on the merits of CIA torture programs pic.twitter.com/3UkXDnWvjQ

— Kate Riga (@Kate_Riga24) May 10, 2018