Cheney admits prisoners were waterboarded

This is a waterboard. The picture comes from the Genocidal Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh - Cambodia. This device got a lot of use during the brutal rein of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Today, Dick Cheney admited that the United States has engaged in torture of suspected terrorists. Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard water-boarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said at one point in an interview in a reich-wing talk-radio interview this afternoon. (Emphasis mine)

Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique.

"What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning."

Usually we are told what the president really meant. This speaking out to explain the actions of Vice is unusual, since there were no firearms or alcohol involved.

(Hat tip to Enozino at We Torture for the photo.)