Cheney's remarks about the technique known as water-boarding have renewed debate about the way the US fights terrorism after Congress last month approved continued CIA interrogations of detainees.
Cheney's comments in a radio interview this week appear to be the US administration's first official acknowledgement of water-boarding, which makes prisoners feel like they are drowning.
The interviewer asked Cheney whether he agreed with people who had called the station saying 'that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives.'
'It's a no-brainer for me,' Cheney said. 'But for a while there I was being criticized as the vice president for torture.'
'We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation programme without torture, and we need to be able to do that,' he said.
Asked about his deputy's comments, Bush on Friday again denied that the US mistreats detainees.
'This country doesn't torture. We're not going to torture,' he told reporters at the White House.
The CIA programme began after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, but Bush acknowledged its existence only last month. He says the questioning yielded valuable intelligence and prevented terror strikes after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
But initial media reports last year that the US intelligence agency had kept and interrogated captured terrorist suspects at secret sites abroad caused an international outcry and investigations in Europe.
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