Cheney: 'No problem' with detaining innocents - Anthony Zurcher

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney made no apologies on Sunday for the US interrogation programme that he helped devise after the 9/11 attacks and expressed no regrets for any innocents who may have been harmed in the process.

Mr Cheney had said in an interview last week on Fox News that he considers the now-released summary of the Senate report on interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda militants to be "full of crap" and that the programme was "fundamentally justified".

Critics who hoped the former vice-president would receive more pointed questions in a Sunday appearance on NBC's Meet the Press weren't disappointed, but Mr Cheney didn't back down from his defence of his actions. He said Bush administration policies have kept the US safe for 13 years, repeatedly referencing the horrors of the 9/11 attacks to justify his actions.

How does he define torture?  -  "Torture to me … is an American citizen on his cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York," he replied.

Did he have a problem with the "involuntary rectal feeding" of some detainees, as detailed in the Senate report?

"What was done here apparently certainly was not one of the techniques that was approved," he said. "I believe it was done for medical reasons." (That contention is disputed by the report and medical experts.)

Was he concerned by the report's findings that up to 25% of detainees were innocents captured as a result of mistaken identity and that one such man, Gul Rahman, froze to death after being doused with water and chained to a wall?

"The problem I have was with all of the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield," he said. "I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent."   Read More at BBC