Cheney on waterboarding: ‘If I would have to do it all over again, I would’

Former Vice President Dick Cheney late Thursday said he did not regret pushing enhanced interrogation techniques under the Bush administration.

“If I would have to do it all over again, I would,” Cheney said at American University, according to its student newspaper The Eagle. “The results speak for themselves.” 

Three people were waterboarded when he was vice president, Cheney said. The technique entails pouring large quantities of water over a person’s nose and mouth, which is meant to simulate drowning.

{mosads}“Some people called it torture. It wasn’t torture,” Cheney told the campus’s student-run TV station. 

A group of students and people attending the event protested Cheney and accused him of being a war criminal. 

“The accusations are not true,” Cheney replied. 

In 2008, Cheney also defended waterboarding in a speech to conservative Republicans in Washington. He said it was effective in obtaining information from terrorism suspects. 

“It’s a good thing we had them in custody, and it’s a good thing we found out what they knew,” he said.