Liz Cheney

Elizabeth Cheney, the older daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is a lawyer and Republican Party activist who has held major posts in the U.S. State Department.

In an appearance on MSNBC on April 23, 2009, Cheney denied that the practice of waterboarding, as authorized in the Bush administration's so-called secret torture memos, is equivalent to torture. Cheney argued that the interrogation technique is the same that has been used in the training of U.S. servicemen and military contractors under a program called SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape).YouTube: Liz Cheney Defends Father's Torture Legacy (Time: 8:37)

The practice of waterboarding has been among the most contentious issues of the War on Terror launched in 2001 by the Bush administration. The practice seeks to create the sensation of drowning by placing the subject on a downward incline on his or her back, and pouring water over the breathing passages.NPR: Waterboarding: A Tortured History (November 3, 2007) Although many proponents of the War on Terror, including Liz Cheney, have defended its use, other have called it torture. One celebrated turnabout is that of political commentator Christopher Hitchens, who rescinded his qualified defense of waterboarding after undergoing a demonstration of the technique himself.The First Post: Christopher Hitchens tries waterboarding (July 2, 2008)