Dick Cheney in a December 15, 2008, telephone interview with Rush Limbaugh (White House dot gov source):

I think Guantanamo has been very well run. I think if you look at it from the perspective of the requirements we had, once you go out and capture a bunch of terrorists, as we did in Afghanistan and elsewhere, then you've got to have some place to put them. If you bring them here to the U.S. and put them in our local court system, then they are entitled to all kinds of rights that we extend only to American citizens.

Remember, these are unlawful combatants. These are people who don't belong to any recognized military force. They don't obey the rules of warfare. They're unlawful combatants. And you can't -- if you're not going to have a place to locate them like Guantanamo, then you either have to bring them here to the continental United States -- and I don't know any member of Congress who's volunteering to have al Qaeda terrorists deposited in his district -- or you've got to turn them over to some foreign government. And we found lots of times when you do that that a number of them have gone back into the -- on to the battlefield and tried to kill Americans again.

So Guantanamo has been very, very valuable. And I think they'll discover that trying to close it is a very hard proposition.

Cheney's claim that these are "unlawful combatants" is itself an admission that he advocates an unlawful abrogation of the Geneva Conventions. The Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War; Part I - General Provisions; Article 5, paragraph 2; states:

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4 (persons defined as POWs), such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

A president, by his determination alone, is not a "competent tribunal". Additionally, the very instant that humans are being held as an "unlawful combatant", the government is detaining them as criminal actors, not as POWs. The Constitution's due process of law dictates control.

In another interview given December 15, 2008, this one with ABC News, Cheney admits that he was fully briefed on the interrogation techniques used against the detainees:

I was aware of the program certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do.  And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do, and I supported it.

He also claimed that these interrogation methods were not torture:

On the question of so-called "torture," we don't do torture, we never have.  It's not something that this administration subscribes to.  Again, we proceeded very cautiously; we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross.  The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal.  And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong.

Cheney subsequently admitted that all detainees were not in fact terrorists, implying that there were some detained without cause:

It's very hard to do.  Guantanamo has been the repository, if you will, of hundreds of terrorists, or suspected terrorists, that we've captured since 9/11.  They -- many of them, hundreds, have been released back to their home countries.  What we have left is the hardcore.  Their cases are reviewed on an annual basis to see whether or not they're still a threat, whether or not they're still intelligence value in terms of continuing to hold them.

There has never been any hard count of detainees held by the government provided to the people, but given the estimates which have been provided in the past, the number is over 700 held at Guantanamo alone. Of those, how many have been charged as "unlawful combatants"? How many of those charged have been convicted?

This has nothing to do with coddling terrorists. It is instead a defense of liberty. The government is not the source of human rights. These rights are secure in their possession by all of humanity. If they are unassailable rights, then they must also be universal rights. Take these detainees into an open court, and secure righteous convictions against them in a trial that afforded due process of law. Then, let the guilty hang. Anything less defames America's very soul.

A people who believe their rights are derived as a generous gift from a magnanimous state can never be free.

A legal system that posits differing standards of applicability, based solely upon nationality can never be just.

An American future in which we the people did not once again chain and muzzle our leviathan, which in the understandable thirst for vengeance because of September 11, 2001, we set loose upon this world as rabid wolf amongst the sheep, will never again experience peace.