Dick Cheney says Obama should reinstate waterboarding program

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Barack Obama should put waterboarding back on the table.

Intelligence derived from the Bush-era enhanced interrogation program "probably" contributed to the of death Osama bin Laden, Cheney told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"Which raises the question, if we were to now capture another new high value target, which is certainly more likely given this apparent trove of information that they recovered in bin Laden's compound, should the president reinstate enhanced interrogation including waterboarding?" Wallace asked.

"Well, I certainly would advocate it," Cheney replied. "I'd be a strong supporter of it."

"We went to a lot of trouble to find out what we could do, how far we could go, what was legal and so forth. Out of that emerged what we called enhanced interrogation. It worked. It provided some absolutely vital pieces of intelligence."

"It was a good program," he continued. "It was a legal program. It was not torture. I would strongly recommend we continue it."

CIA Director Leon Panetta has said waterboarding is torture but the former Vice President disagreed.

"Waterboarding and all of the other techniques that were used are techniques that we use training our own people. This is stuff that we've done for years with own military personnel. To suggest that it's torture, I just think is wrong."

The former vice president called the Obama's administration's investigation of CIA interrogators that may have abused detainees an "outrage."

"These men, all devoted, capable officials shouldn't have to look over their shoulder and worry if they follow the orders of this president to carry out this interrogation program at some point down the road when there is a change in policy, they can expect to be prosecuted," he said.

Watch this video from Fox's Fox News Sunday, broadcast May 8, 2011.

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