Torture saved UK from terror - George Bush

GEORGE Bush has claimed that information obtained from terrorist suspects through "waterboarding" prevented attacks on the UK, saving British lives.

• George Bush offered Tony Blair the option of not sending troops to Iraq when the then prime minister faced a vote of no confidence Picture: Getty

In his memoirs, released today, he writes the use of the controversial interrogation technique - which simulates drowning - had helped break up plots to attack London's Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf.

Last night in a newspaper interview he confirmed he had authorised the use of waterboarding to extract information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attack, telling the paper: "Damn right!"

Mr Bush said: "Three people were waterboarded and I believe that decision saved lives."

In the book, Decision Points, he writes: "Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the US."

The British government has long rejected the use of waterboarding, which it regards as torture.

In a speech last month, the chief of MI6 Sir John Sawers insisted that his service had "nothing whatsoever" to do with torture which he described as "illegal and abhorrent".

More: The Bush memoirs

• 'Drunk as a skunk', he decided to stop drinking

• Day his mother showed him a foetus in a jar

In the interview, Mr Bush described his close relationship with former prime minister Tony Blair, but was dismissive of public opinion in Britain about the war in Iraq.

"It doesn't matter how people perceive me in England. It just doesn't matter any more. And frankly, at times, it didn't matter then," he said.

Mr Bush recalled how when Mr Blair faced a possible vote of no confidence in parliament on the eve of war, he offered him the chance to opt out of sending British troops into Iraq. He said that "rather than lose the government, I would much rather have Tony and his wisdom and his strategic thinking as the prime minister of a strong and important ally".

However, Mr Blair told him: "I'm in. If it costs the government, fine."

Mr Bush describes how he was appalled to discover that the intelligence about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction had proved to be wrong.

"The reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false," he writes.

"No-one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons.

"I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do."

Nevertheless he insists that he was right to take military action to remove Saddam Hussein.

"There were things we got wrong in Iraq, but that cause is eternally right," he writes.

Mr Bush is also understood to disclose that he instructed a plan to be drawn up for a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

"I directed the Pentagon to study what would be necessary for a strike," he writes."This would be to stop the bomb clock, at least temporarily."

He says he also considered mounting an air strike or raid on a secret Syrian nuclear facility, but the Pentagon and the CIA concluded it was "too risky".

In a separate interview on US television last night, Mr Bush said of his presidency: "I really don't care about perceptions."

Exposing tensions in the White House, he told interviewer Matt Lauer that his vice-president Dick Cheney angrily confronted him over his decision not to pardon a former vice-presidential aide over his role in the case of the leaked identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Mr Bush said he was worried the incident would fracture his friendship with Mr Cheney. But he said: "I'm pleased to report we are friends today."

It emerged last week that Mr Bush believes the low point of his presidency was when rap star Kanye West said that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" in the wake of the government's slow response the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

In the interview, Mr Lauer asks Mr Bush if he thinks he might be criticised for saying the low point was being insulted, not the suffering of the people in Louisiana. "I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well," Mr Bush replies. "There's a lot of tough moments in the book."