© AFPForrmer US Vice-President Dick Cheney said harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding should be reinstated due to their playing a key role in tracking down Osama bin Laden.
Another top member of the Bush administration, former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, credited the use of so-called 'enhanced interrogation techniques' with yielding 'a major fraction' of US intelligence on Al-Qaeda and called ending them a 'mistake.'
In one of the first acts after entering the White House in 2009, President Barack Obama suspended such methods, equating them with torture and saying they represented all that was wrong with the Bush-era 'war on terror.'
But the killing of Osama, or more exactly the way the intelligence was gathered that led the CIA to track him down, has reopened a raging controversy in the United States over their use.
Mr Cheney, speaking on the Fox News Sunday program, said top intelligence officials had stated that 'some of the early leads' that helped agents find bin Laden had come thanks to the harsh interrogation techniques used on terror suspects.
'All have said one way or the other that the enhanced interrogation program played a role,' he said. 'My guess is that's probably the case that it contributed, just as did a number of other factors.' Asked whether the methods should be reinstated if the United States were to capture a new high-value target, Mr Cheney replied: 'I certainly would advocate it. I'd be a strong supporter of it.'
...is now using the faked myth of the Bin Laden death scenario to call for a reinstatement of torture as a means of intelligence gathering, which unfortunately comes as no suprise to those who have seen this psychopathic monster at work...this from a psychopath who shows no empathy or remorse for the shooting of a hunting "friend", at point blank range with a shotgun. this monster should already be incarcerated for life with no chance of parole! It's painfully obvious that this faked death scenario has been ochastrated to advance the imperialist ambitions of a Psychopathic and Fascist Empire in their conquest of our minds, objectivity and reason, to further infect our thinking with pathological memes, ideals and reasoning!! This is one of the most sadistic spins and uses of the faked death scenario yet, to advance the tyrannical "War on Freedom" and "War on Perception".