Cheney to Rush: Interrogations ‘Absolutely Essential’

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told Rush Limbaugh the most important moment during his eight years in office occurred when terrorist-surveillance programs and enhanced interrogation techniques were developed in response to 9/11.”A lot of that stuff was very controversial, but it was absolutely essential in order for us to prevent mass casualty attacks,” Cheney said Tuesday on the radio program.
Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh
(Getty Images)
Limbaugh welcomed Cheney to the show by gushing, “You are a great man,” and reading the former vice president’s resume on the air.

He then asked about the Valerie Plame scandal that ended in a felony conviction for former Cheney adviser Scooter Libby.

Cheney said former Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Gen. Colin Powell leaked the information to columnist Robert Novak, “and the only one who was [sanctioned] was Libby, who didn’t do anything.”

Limbaugh asked Cheney how he has dealt, on a personal level, with the monikers of “demon,” “devil,” and “Darth Vader.”

“If you’ve been around as long as I have, Rush, by the time I got to be vice president, I certainly expected . . . to be subjected to a certain amount of criticism and abuse,” Cheney responded. “It goes with the turf.”

He admitted he got a kick out of a Saturday Night Live skit in which Darrell Hammond was “portraying me as a one-man Afghani wrecking crew.”

“You really had to take it with a grain of salt,” he said.

Other topics Cheney touched on were weapons of mass destruction, the economy, and the 2012 election.

“To say that there was no WMD, that is conventional wisdom,” Cheney said when Limbaugh asked for his reaction to the official findings. “There were no stockpiles, but there certainly were the capacity and the intention.”

The grandfather of seven said the U.S. debt problem is “horrendous” and fears the military will take a hit because of it.

“I’m worried that the price for that will be paid by drastic cuts in the defense budget,” he said.

{Newsmax/Matzav.com Newscenter}