Dick Cheney: No Regrets

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was on Face the Nation yesterday.

He makes no apologies for the steps that were taken to keep Americans safe in the post-9/11 era.



Transcript

BOB SCHIEFFER: You said -- you said just a moment ago as you were talking about this, that -- you said that we have to realize what was at stake and we have to realize the circumstances. Do you have any regrets whatsoever about any of the methods that were taken? Any of the things that were used back in those days? Because there's no question the country -- it was a different time. The country's mood was different. We had just been -- something had happened here that had never happened before.

In retrospect, you -- years have passed. You're now out of office. Do you think we should have done some things differently back then, or do you have any regrets about any of it?

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: No regrets. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I'm convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.

In the aftermath of 9/11, we had all of these questions about who Al Qaida was, where they were operating and so forth. We didn't know nearly as much as we know today. We were faced with a very real possibility -- we had reporting that said Al Qaida is trying to acquire nuclear capabilities. We had the A.Q. Khan network out there, a black-market operator selling nuclear weapons technology to Libya, North
Korea and Iran. We had the anthrax attack within a matter of weeks after 9/11. We had the kind of situation that meant that we were absolutely convinced, the country was convinced, that there was a very high likelihood of a follow-on attack, a mass casualty attack against the United States. No one then would have bet anything that you're going to go eight years and not have another attack. And we know, in fact,
that they did try other attacks, and that we were able to stop them.

Now, if you'd look at it from the perspective of a senior government official, somebody like myself, who stood up and took the oath of office on January 20th of '01 and raised their right hand and said we're going to protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, this was exactly, exactly what was needed to do it.

I think if you look at this intelligence program that when things are quieter, 20 or 30 years from now, you'll be able to look back on this and say this is one of the great success stories of American intelligence. I think, in fact, what the men and women in the intelligence community and the lawyers in the Justice Department and the senior officials who approved this program did exactly the right thing. I think the charge that somehow there was something wrong done here or that this was torture in violation of U.S. statutes is just absolutely false.

I give Cheney credit for being so vocal about defending the policies of the Bush administration. He's not rolling over and allowing the Democrats to monopolize the discussion.

Obama and the Dems certainly aren't making us safer by handing over our tactics to our enemies and giving them recruiting fodder by constantly yapping about our use of what the Dems call torture, torture, torture.

Of course, the Dems' outrage is more than a bit disingenuous given that Dems, like Nancy Pelosi, were briefed on interrogation tactics and didn't object.

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Former vice president Dick Cheney insisted that intelligence extracted from tough interrogations of suspected Al-Qaeda militants had saved "perhaps hundreds of thousands" of US lives.

...Recently released memorandums detail the reasoning used by Bush administration lawyers to justify waterboarding and other techniques such as sleep deprivation, physical slaps and painful "stress positions."

Cheney reaffirmed his belief that Obama had made the United States more vulnerable to attack, and condemned calls by Democratic lawmakers for the Bush legal officials to face prosecution.

The former vice president challenged Obama to declassify two memos that he said showed the Central Intelligence Agency had thwarted acts of terrorism thanks to information gleaned from the interrogations.

"The memos do exist. I have seen them. I had them in my files at one time. Now everything is part of the National Archives. I'm sure the agency (CIA) has copies of those materials," he said.

"If we're going to have this debate, it ought to be a complete debate. Those memos ought to be out there for people to look at and journalists like yourself to evaluate in terms of what we were able to accomplish."

The press should be on the Obama administration for releasing the two memos that reveal what the interrogations accomplished.

I agree with Cheney. If there's going to be a debate, it should be a complete debate.

It's wrong for Obama to selectively release just some information.

Americans should have access to the rest of the story. The world should have that access.

Again, Obama is acting like a politician and doing what he believes is in his best interest. He's not acting like a leader and doing what's best for the country. He's a puppet of the Leftists bent on getting revenge against the Bush administration.

I really wonder how the Democrats would have responded if they held the White House when we were attacked on 9/11.

What would they have done? Who knows what would have happened? Would there have been more attacks and more lives lost?

The Obama administration should release the two memos that Cheney says prove the value of the interrogations.

What does Obama have to hide?

He didn't hesitate to make public the details on the methods of interrogation. He shouldn't hesitate to make public the details of the results.

Clearly, Obama doesn't want that information known. It must be quite compelling.

He's not being honest with the American people. We deserve the truth.