Real Reason For Iraq Invasion Revealed

Cheney OK With Torture, Admits To War Crimes

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Cheney unrepentant on Guantanamo

ISTANBUL – The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay should remain open indefinitely, Vice-President Dick Cheney told ABC News in an interview, while he also defended the practice of subjecting detainees to simulated drowning during questioning, known as waterboarding.

The vice president was asked on late Monday that when the United States could responsibly close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which was set up to hold detainees in the war on terror launched after Sept. 11.”

Well, I think that would come with the end of the war on terror,” Cheney said. “And when is that?” he asked.

“Well, nobody knows,” Cheney replied. “Nobody can specify that.”

The vice-president also admitted he was aware that waterboarding was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. ABC asked him if in hindsight he thought the tactics went too far. “I don’t,” Cheney said.

In previous wars the United States has “always exercised the right to capture the enemy and then hold them till the end of the conflict. That’s what we did in World War II with, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of German prisoners,” Cheney said, as reported Agence France-Presse.

“The same basic principle ought to apply here in terms of our right to capture the enemy and hold them,” he added.

The other option, Cheney said, “is to turn them over to somebody else. A lot of them, nobody wants. I mean, there’s a great resistance sometimes in the home countries to taking these people back into their own territory.”

According to Cheney, some 30 detainees who were released from Guantanamo “ended up back on the battlefield again, and we’ve encountered them a second time around. But they’ve either been killed or captured in further conflicts with our forces.”

In another interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, Cheney said Guantanamo “has been very well run” and the incoming administration of Barack Obama would have a difficult time closing it. “Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they (the Obama administration) will discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition,” Reuters quoted Cheney as saying. The United States is holding about 250 prisoners at Guantanamo and has released or transferred out another 520.

Taken From — Hurriyet Daily News

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