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Bush knew about CIA torture, says Cheney

Former US President George W. Bush/AFP

Former US President George W. Bush/AFP

WASHINGTON, Dec 11 – President George W Bush was fully aware and an “integral part” of the CIA’s torture of terror suspects, his vice-president Dick Cheney said Wednesday.

The long-awaited US Senate report released Tuesday on the program of harsh treatment and torture of detainees said Bush only learned details of it in 2006, four years after it started in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Detainees were beaten, waterboarded – some of them dozens of times – and humiliated through the painful use of medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration”, the report said.

Speaking to Fox News, Cheney denied Bush was kept out of the loop. He said the then-president “was in fact an integral part of the program and he had to approve it.” READ: CIA torture sparks world outrage, demands for justice.

Asked if Bush knew specific details of how specific interrogations were being conducted, Cheney was more vague, saying: “We did discuss the techniques. There was no effort on our part to keep him from that.”

Bush has yet to speak out publicly on the Senate report, which has drawn scathing criticism worldwide of what the CIA has called “enhanced interrogation techniques”, amid and calls for those involved to face trial.

The CIA deliberately misled Congress and the White House about the value of the intelligence its interrogators were gathering, the report concluded.

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