A White House spokesman, asked about Hunter's comments, said, ''We should never limit our options."
''The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people," Cheney said in an interview to be aired today on Fox News Channel's ''Hannity & Colmes." ''These are terrorists for the most part," he said. ''These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the Al Qaeda network."
''We've already screened the detainees there and released a number, sent them back to their home countries," Cheney said in the interview, which was taped Friday. ''But what's left is hard-core."
The prison in Cuba holds about 540 detainees. Some have been there for more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantanamo Bay in hope of extracting intelligence.
Senator Chuck Hagel said yesterday that the United States is ''losing the image war around the world" and that Guantanamo is one reason. ''People in the world believe [America] is a power, an empire that pushes people around -- we do it our way, we don't live up to our commitments to multilateral institutions," Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, told CNN's ''Late Edition."
He said Pentagon leaders have failed to take responsibility for the prison situation, including harsh interrogation techniques and mistreatment of detainees.
''This is all adding up to a very dangerous drift in this country. . . . Not only is it going to end in disaster for us and humility for this country, but we're going to present to the world a very dangerous world if we don't wake up and smell the coffee here," Hagel said.
The Pentagon said in a statement yesterday that it ''does not wish to hold detainees longer than necessary and effective processes are in place to regularly review the status of enemy combatants."
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans a hearing Wednesday on the issue of detainees.
