Cheney: 'I'd do it again in a minute' He says the CIA’s actions did not amount to torture. 
 
 Former Vice President Dick Cheney unapologetically pressed his defense of the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques Sunday, insisting that waterboarding and other such tactics did not amount to torture and that the spy agency’s actions paled in comparison to those of terrorists targeting Americans. 
 
 “Torture, to me … is an American citizen on his cellphone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York on 9/11,” Cheney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There’s this 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 stop short of torture.” 
 
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 Cheney also disputed the notion that any American taken prisoner overseas by terrorists was now at greater risk of being subjected to techniques like those used by the CIA. 
 
 “He’s not likely to be waterboarded. He’s likely to have his head cut off,” the former vice president said of a potential American taken hostage by a group like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. “I haven’t seen them waterboard anybody.” 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Feds in 2-front fight against release of records on CIA 'torture') 
 
 While a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the interrogation program shocked many with its vivid descriptions of one unresponsive prisoner frothing at the mouth after waterboarding and others shackled from bars in stress positions for prolonged periods, Cheney was unrepentant. 
 
 He repeatedly dismissed the Senate inquiry as “partisan” but seemed entirely comfortable with a public discussion of the once-secret techniques. 
 
 Indeed, Cheney seemed proud of his role in creating the interrogation program. 
 
 “I’d do it again in a minute,” he declared. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Bill Clinton: Let's push for more info on CIA torture) 
 
 Asked if the report created “any seed of doubt” for him about the wisdom of the CIA effort, Cheney replied: “No … absolutely not.” 
 
 Despite being pressed by host Chuck Todd to offer a definition of torture, Cheney did not go beyond saying the Justice Department provided legal approvals for the program, which was blasted last week in a long-awaited report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The panel’s study found that the interrogation effort was badly mismanaged, abandoned or never used safeguards it was supposed to follow and failed to produce the kind of critical intelligence that CIA and Bush White House officials said justified the program. 
 
 At one point during the NBC interview, the former vice president appeared to suggest that anything the CIA or its personnel did could not have amounted to torture, regardless of the brutality of the conduct. 
 
 Asked about revelations in the newly released report about “rectal rehydration” and “rectal feeding” as part of the agency’s “enhanced interrogation” program, Cheney said he believes those procedures were undertaken for “medical reasons,” even though many medical experts said they are not. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Hayden defends CIA's use of rectal rehydration) 
 
 “It wasn’t torture in terms of it wasn’t part of the program,” the former vice president said. 
 
 As the interview aired in Washington, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein streamed messages out on Twitter countering Cheney. 
 
 “Torture didn’t work,” Feinstein wrote. “CIA personnel ‘disturbed’ by use of torture, ‘some to the point of tears and choking up.’” 
 
 Cheney expressed no regrets as he discussed the torture controversy Sunday, even regarding the detention and aggressive interrogation of prisoners who turned out to have no known connection to terrorism. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Feinstein fact-checks Brennan on Twitter) 
 
 Todd pointed in particular to the case of Gul Rahman, who was taken prisoner in Afghanistan and chained to the floor of a CIA “black site” known as the Salt Pit, where he died from exposure to cold temperatures. CIA records quoted in the Senate report say Gul’s detention was a case of mistaken identity. 
 
 “Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck?” Cheney said. “I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.” 
 
 Cheney insisted that the program did produce intelligence that saved lives. 
 
 “It worked,” he said. “It absolutely did work.” 
 
 The former vice president cited as one of the program’s successes the example of an alleged plot to fly airliners into tall buildings on the U.S. West Coast. However, the Senate report says the key information about such a plot actually came from a person not in U.S. custody. 
 
 Cheney also criticized the Senate investigation for not interviewing either CIA personnel or detainees. 
 
 “The report is seriously flawed,” he said. “They didn’t talk to anybody who knew anything about the program. They didn’t talk to anyone who was in the program.” 
 
 “It’s a small report,” the vice president said of the review, whose full report runs to more than 6,000 pages. “It didn’t begin to approach what’s required by way of responsible oversight.” 
 
 Appearing on NBC just after Cheney, Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said the lack of interviews was due to the fact that a Justice Department criminal investigation was underway during much of the time the Senate probe took place, making it difficult to question CIA personnel involved. 
 
 Wyden also disputed Cheney’s claim that the report, which was undertaken by Democratic staffers after the GOP withdrew early on, was a “partisan” document. 
 
 “Facts aren’t partisan,” Wyden said. “We reviewed 6 million pages of documents. … There are a mountain of contradictions.” 
 
 Follow @politico ||||| Story highlights Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he supports the CIA's Bush-era interrogation tactics 
 
 "I would do it again in a minute," he said on Sunday 
 
 Cheney called the recently released Senate report on the practices "seriously flawed" 
 
 A defiant former Vice President Dick Cheney stood by his defense of the extreme interrogation techniques used by the CIA on detainees in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Sunday, saying, "I would do it again in a minute." 
 
 Critics of the interrogation tactics -- detailed in a recently released controversial Senate report -- contend they should be considered torture and regretted. But Cheney said there is no "moral equivalence" between the terrorists' actions and the CIA's interrogation techniques. 
 
 "With respect to trying to define that as torture, I come back to the proposition torture was what the al Qaeda terrorists did to 3,000 Americans on 9/11," Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "There's no comparison between that and what we did with the respect to enhanced interrogation." 
 
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 The former vice president also dispelled the report's findings that then-President George W. Bush was unaware of the techniques taking place, saying that Bush authorized the tactics, and the report detailing otherwise is a "lie." 
 
 "We got the authorization from the President and authorization from the Justice Department to go forward with the program," Cheney said. "It worked." 
 
 Cheney also said he believed the involuntary rectal feeding and hydration tactic revealed in the report was not, in his mind, considered torture, but rather a medical procedure, despite medical experts denouncing the tactic as ineffective and not medically justified. 
 
 "That does not meet the definition of what was used in the program," Cheney said. 
 
 Cheney called the report "seriously flawed," contending that the analysis was conducted in a partisan fashion and was released without speaking to anyone who knew anything about the program. 
 
 "It was based on, done only by, Democratic staff," Cheney told CNN on Sunday. "It's very, very poor piece of work. It should not be used to judge the agency or the program."
– Dick Cheney today doubled down on his defense of the CIA's so-called harsh interrogation techniques, telling Meet the Press that "torture to me is an American citizen on his cell phone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the [World Trade Center] on 9/11." He continues, "There’s this 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 stop short of torture…. I’d do it again in a minute." More highlights from the interview, as per Politico and CNN: On the Senate Intelligence Committee's report: "The report is seriously flawed. They didn’t talk to anybody who knew anything about the program. They didn’t talk to anyone who was in the program. It’s a small report. It didn’t begin to approach what’s required by way of responsible oversight." On whether Americans captured abroad are more likely to face torture: "He’s not likely to be waterboarded. He’s likely to have his head cut off. I haven’t seen them waterboard anybody." On the report's claim that President Bush was unaware of the program: That's a "lie. We got the authorization from the president and authorization from the Justice Department to go forward with the program." On the CIA program's payoff: "It worked. It absolutely did work."