Cheney Enters Memos Fray

The CIA, under Barack Obama, was more than willing to release internal memorandums that spelled out in detail which interrogation techniques the Bush administration approved of as acceptable in efforts to gather information from detainees in the war on terror. The release of the memos also included information that two high level detainees at Guantanamo were waterboarded a total of over 250 times.

Such information, as you can imagine, raised an international as well as a domestic stink. Meanwhile, almost unnoticed, the USA has remained free of any terrorist attack on its homeland since 9/11/2001.

The latest person to enter the fray is former VP Dick Cheney who suggests the CIA should release even more documents--namely the ones that contain the details as to how many terrorist attacks were averted because of the harsh interrogations.

Mr Cheney said that the decision to publish the memos was a mistake.

And it was misleading, he said, because the documents did not include those demonstrating that harsh interrogation delivered intelligence "success".

"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort," Mr Cheney told Fox News.

"There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now."

The American people should have a chance to weigh the intelligence obtained alongside the legal debate, he said.

We will see if the Obama administration feels it necessary to release all of the documents in its quest to achieve a higher level of transparency, one of the reasons behind releasing the original CIA memos in the first place, or if the release was just another tired attempt by Obama to discredit the US and the Bush administration.