In an interview broadcast on Meet the Press from America's NBC news former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney defended the torturing of prisoners held by America following the attacks of 11 September 2001.
Torture is against both U.S. and international law yet Dick Cheney stated he would torture again this following the release of the U.S. Senates report on torture.
Former US vice-president robustly defends CIA interrogation methods
Republicans and intelligence community attack Senate report
In a combative interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Cheney was unrepentant about the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were deployed under his watch. He swatted away evidence contained in the Senate intelligence committee report into the CIA programme that a suspect later found to be innocent froze to death having been shackled naked to a cell wall, and that detainees were rectally infused with food, refusing to accept a torture definition for either example.
“Torture to me is an American citizen on a cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death on the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York City on 9/11,” Cheney said.
“There’s a notion that there’s moral equivalence between what the terrorists did and what we do, and that’s absolutely not true. We were very careful to stay short of torture.”
Part I
Article 1
For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.
Article 2
Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
Article 3
No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
CIA Knew the Techniques Were Illegal
The report reveals new evidence that the CIA was well aware of the illegality of the techniques it was employing. On page 33, the summary notes that senior lawyers at the CIA internally circulated a draft letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft dated July 8, 2002, expressly acknowledging that the interrogation tactics that came to be known as “enhanced interrogation techniques” violated the US Torture Statute. The draft – it is unclear if it was ever sent – requested that the Justice Department provide the CIA with “a formal declination of prosecution, in advance.” That is, the CIA sought a promise from the Justice Department never to prosecute –or immunity.
This document contradicts previous CIA officials’ claims that they did not know whether the tactics were legal and that they relied on guidance from Justice Department legal counsel in good faith. Instead, the document makes clear that senior CIA officials knew their tactics were illegal, and were trying to create some form of legal cover for those actions. When their efforts to obtain an advance declination failed, they sought and procured another form of cover through a series of legal memos – the so-called “Torture Memos” – drafted by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and the White House counsel beginning in August 2002, which purported to authorize the techniques.
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