Sen. Angus King (I-ME) on Sunday criticized former Vice President Dick Cheney (R) for defending the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration.
“If he doesn’t think that was torture, I would invite him anywhere in the United States to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through, one of them 100-plus-odd times,” King said on MSNBC’s “Up With Steve Kornacki,” as recorded by Mediaite.
“That’s ridiculous to make that claim. This was torture by anybody’s definition. John McCain said it’s torture and I think he’s in a better position to know that than Vice President Cheney.”
Cheney defended the interrogation practices in March during an interview with American University television station, ATV.
“Some people called it torture. It wasn’t torture,” he said.
King cited the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into interrogation practices under the Bush administration and said that the CIA’s worst offense was “misrepresenting it the way they did throughout a number of years.”
“To say it was carefully managed and everybody knew what was going on, that’s absolute nonsense,” King said.
