The White House went on the offensive Friday, denying that comments made by Vice-President Dick Cheney in an interview were an endorsement for torturing terror suspects.

Cheney was asked Tuesday in a television interview with a Fargo, N.D., station, "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?

President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney prior to the signing of the Military Commissions Act at the White House on Oct. 17.
(Ron Edmonds/Associated Press)

"It’s a no-brainer for me, but, for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice-president for torture," Cheney said. 

"We don’t torture. That’s not what we are involved in. We live up to our obligations and international treaties that we are a party to."

President George W. Bush was asked about Cheney's comments Friday while posing for photographs with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

"This country doesn't torture, we're not going to torture," Bush said. "We will interrogate people we pick up off the battlefield to determine whether or not they've got information that will be helpful to protect the country."

But Democrats and human rights advocates quickly seized on the remarks as evidence that Cheney was advocating the use of waterboarding, where an interrogated person is subjected to a simulated drowning.

"What's really a no-brainer is that no U.S. official, much less a vice-president, should champion torture," Amnesty International said in a release. "Vice-President Cheney's advocacy of waterboarding sets a new human rights low at a time when human rights is already scraping the bottom of the Bush administration barrel."

Practice banned

The practice is banned in international treaties, and earlier this year, a U.S. State Department representative told a UN committee that the military would prohibit the practice, while stopping short of admitting whether it had been used in the past.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the vice-president's response was "loosely worded" and not about the specific practice.

"The vice-president says he was talking in general terms about a questioning program that is legal to save American lives, and he was not referring to waterboarding," Snow said.

Asked by reporters what the expression "a dunk in the water" referred to," Snow replied: "A dunk in the water."

The Fargo interviewer, Scott Hennen, offered his own opinion, saying to Cheney earlier in the interview that the debate over interrogation techniques "seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?"

Interrogation techniques

The debate over interrogation techniques was serious enough that a trio of senators from the president's own party, led by John McCain, fought the administration so that recent legislation would adhere to Geneva Convention standards and prohibit methods of torture such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation techniques.

The Military Commissions Act signed by Bush on Oct. 17 bans rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment but critics have charged that the wording of the legislation is vague and that it doesn't explicitly outline banned practices.

The legislation was a response to a ruling in June by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the military commissions used to try inmates at Guantanamo Bay were illegal under American and international law.

UN rights expert Martin Scheinin said Friday the new act contains provisions that are "incompatible" with previous obligations the U.S. has undertaken in international treaties on human rights and humanitarian law and may violate those treaties.

With files from the Associated Press