Cheney Defends Prison Camp

Vice President Dick Cheney says he’s offended by a human rights group’s report criticizing conditions at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The report Amnesty International released last week said detainees at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba had been mistreated and called for the prison to be shut down. Cheney derided the London-based group in an interview broadcast Monday on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

“Frankly, I was offended by it,” Cheney said. “For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don’t take them seriously.”

Cheney is the latest Bush administration official to object to the report. On Sunday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers called the Amnesty International report “absolutely irresponsible.”

Washington’s defense of its detention and interrogation practices comes after weeks of international criticism and violent protests by Muslims outraged at reports -- for which the Pentagon says there is no credible evidence -- that an interrogator at Guantanamo had flushed pages of the Koran down a toilet.

Cheney said detainees at Guantanamo “have been well treated, treated humanely and decently.”