Cheney Throws Bush Under The Bus On Torture Program

FILE - In this Oct. 6, 2011, file photo, former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at the third annual Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum in Washington. Cheney has been released from a Northern Virginia hospital af... FILE - In this Oct. 6, 2011, file photo, former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks at the third annual Washington Ideas Forum at the Newseum in Washington. Cheney has been released from a Northern Virginia hospital after having a heart transplant. The former vice president’s office said in a statement that the 71-year-old Cheney was released Tuesday, April 3, 2012, from Inova Fairfax Hospital Heart and Vascular Institute 10 days after receiving a new heart from an unknown donor. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File) MORE LESS
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Dick Cheney discussed the newly released Senate torture report Wednesday on Fox News, and in particular challenged a finding that former President George W. Bush hadn’t been briefed on the CIA’s harsh interrogation methods until years after they’d already been in use.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked the former vice president whether the agency deliberately kept Bush in the dark about its so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

“Not true. Didn’t happen,” Cheney responded. “Read his book, he talks about it extensively in his memoirs. He was in fact an integral part of the program, he had to approve it before we went forward with it.”

Asked if there was ever a point where he knew more about the CIA’s activity than the President, Cheney said “I think he knew everything he needed to know and wanted to know about the program.”

Baier then asked if the former President knew about the “details” of the program. The report — which Cheney called “full of crap” — described brutal interrogation methods including waterboarding, extensive sleep deprivation, threats to harm detainees’ families and “rectal feeding.”

“I think he knew certainly the techniques, we did discuss the techniques,” Cheney said. “There was no effort on our part to keep him from that.”

“The notion that the committee’s trying to peddle, that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis, and we weren’t being told or the President wasn’t being told, is just a flat out lie,” he later added.

Notable Replies

  1. One thing about Dick Cheney, he has been a clASS act the wHOLE time.

  2. One of the most troubling aspects of the Senate report is that it led directly to an utterance by Dick Cheney.

  3. Avatar for pdxer pdxer says:

    These war criminals should face justice at The Hague.

  4. Avatar for jw1 jw1 says:

    “The notion that the committee’s trying to peddle, that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis, and we weren’t being told or the President wasn’t being told, is just a flat out lie,” he later added.

    Guilty as charged then?
    The Hague on line 1-- for you-- Dick.

    jw1

  5. War criminal says what?

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