In a luncheon round table interview today with a small group of conservative journalists, Vice President Dick Cheney insisted that “we don’t torture” but that “enhanced interrogation techniques” have “produced a wealth of information” that has protected the United States against terrorists – and, on a far more personal level, said that his four decades in public life have been a “helluva ride” that he is “seriously thinking” about recording in memoirs after he leaves office.

Cheney refused to comment on whether he has advised President George W. Bush to pardon his former top aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby or to comment on Libby’s perjury conviction – “the question of a pardon really falls in the President’s purview and his alone” – but emphatically pronounced himself a “huge fan of Scooter’s. He’s an extraordinarily able individual.”