Epigraph:

Golden rule: One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney

Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney made no apologies on Sunday for the US interrogation programme that he helped devise after the 9/11 attacks and expressed no regrets for any innocents who may have been harmed in the process.

Mr Cheney had said in an interview last week on Fox News that he considers the now-released summary of the Senate report on interrogation of suspected al-Qaeda militants to be “full of crap” and that the programme was “fundamentally justified”.

Critics who hoped the former vice-president would receive more pointed questions in a Sunday appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press weren’t disappointed, but Mr Cheney didn’t back down from his defence of his actions. He said Bush administration policies have kept the US safe for 13 years, repeatedly referencing the horrors of the 9/11 attacks to justify his actions.

How does he define torture?

“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 Trade Center in New York,” he replied.

Did he have a problem with the “involuntary rectal feeding” of some detainees, as detailed in the Senate report?

“What was done here apparently certainly was not one of the techniques that was approved,” he said. “I believe it was done for medical reasons.” (That contention is disputed by the report and medical experts.)

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