Step back and try to look at our overall war strategy and not specifically at al-qaeda as the enemy. If what Cheney is saying is what he and the GOP believe, and if preventative detention is a re-conceived policy of the democrats too, what on earth would they say is acceptable policy if we were at a formal declared war with another nuclear country?
Step back and see that the war we're fighting is against people without a stable national power grid. They don't have a modern 'trained' formal military, but rather people recruited who are used to stoning criminals for crimes. As a country, they can be seen as having just discovered explosives and we freak out about these unmodern "IED"s. We tortured to prevent an attack on the US and to prevent a nuclear weapon from being acquired.
So what is allowed when the enemy has nuclear weapons and a modern army?
Is our government telling us that to prevent an attack on the US, we must torture in rare cases, but if we were at formal war and knew the enemy had nuclear weapons and we needed to know where they are targeted, where is first strike, and when it would be used, we would not deem that information more urgent or torture-worthy of captured commanders because the Geneva conventions apply to a formal war under a formal national government, even if we knew a nuclear attack was coming with much more certainty and much sooner than we are(should be) of terrorists using one?
I understand the situation is different where we assume if the terrorists got a nuclear weapon, they would try to use it on us, but if there wasn't a threat from a nuclear power, if we were in a wartime situation with a formal military enemy--which we are suppose to have 'air dominance' and superior solider training over--and we were close to victory and/or had intelligence far more superior to iraq's yellowcake threat showing a nuclear attack was close, or being decided, is that not a more serious threat to us where the clandestine detention of the enemy's government, military, science, or civilian personnel and torture was allowed to find out where/when an attack was coming? Or would a "preventative" nuclear strike of our own be told was more in line with our principles instead of retention, imprisonment, and torture?
What is our overall policy, when does it apply, and why aren't these questions being answered? How on earth is "enhanced interrogation" more acceptable to terrorists threats and we're told not if a formal war with a formal enemy that honors the Geneva Conventions were happening instead but we had intelligence that a real nuclear strike was coming?