WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney has confirmed that U.S. interrogators subjected captured senior Al Qaeda suspects to an interrogation technique called "waterboarding," which creates a sensation of drowning.

Cheney indicated that the Bush administration doesn't regard waterboarding as torture and allows the CIA to use it. "It's a no-brainer for me," Cheney said in an interview.

His comments, in a White House interview Tuesday with a conservative radio talk show host, appeared to reflect the Bush administration's view that the president has the constitutional power to do whatever he deems necessary to fight terrorism.

The Army, senior Republican lawmakers, human-rights experts and many experts on the laws of war, however, consider waterboarding cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment that is banned by U.S. law and international treaties that prohibit torture.