Cheney's Remarks Fuel Torture Debate

"I think the context is clear that he's agreeing that what the interviewer suggested -- dunking people in water to interrogate them -- is a no-brainer," Sifton said. "Basically, what the vice president did is inject ambiguity into a situation in which Congress and the military thinks there is no ambiguity."

Neal Sonnett, chairman of an American Bar Association task force on enemy combatants, said Cheney's comments were "a little equivocal" on details but clear in their overall meaning.

"It may be too much to characterize it as a direct admission," Sonnett said. "But he is certainly suggesting that he doesn't see anything wrong with waterboarding."

In waterboarding -- one of a number of drowning-simulation techniques that date to the Spanish Inquisition -- a prisoner is generally strapped down with his feet higher than his head. Water is then poured on his face while his nose and mouth are covered by a cloth. The technique produces an intense sensation of being close to suffocation and drowning, according to interrogation experts and human rights advocates.

The Khmer Rouge and other outlaw regimes have employed the method, and it has been condemned by many human rights and military lawyers as a clear example of illegal torture.

In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese soldier for war crimes and sentenced him to 15 years hard labor for using the technique on a U.S. prisoner.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.