Vice President Cheney on Sunday defended the Bush administration’s actions over the past eight years, saying that they have kept the country safe without violating anybody’s civil liberties.

“I would absolutely do it again,” Cheney said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” following questions about warrantless wiretapping, the Guantanamo Bay prison and harsh interrogation techniques. “I think the loss of life, if there had been further mass casualty attacks against the United States over the last seven-and-a-half years, fully justifies it.”

“I don’t believe we violated anybody’s civil liberties,” said Cheney, who criticized the New York Times for its “outrageous decision” to publish a story on the government’s surveillance program even after being asked not to.

He also said he hoped that incoming President Obama “would avoid doing what others have done in the past, which is letting the campaign rhetoric guide his judgment in this absolutely crucial area.”

Cheney did not answer directly a question of whether the country was better off now than before he and President Bush took office. Instead, the vice president said: “We’ve done some very good things over the course of the last eight years.”

He pointed to the lack of another terrorist attack after September 11, 2001, as well as passage of education reform and a Medicare drug benefit as things the administration accomplished.

Cheney also defended the handling of the Iraq war, saying that the original campaign was “masterfully done” and that the situation in the country now is evidence of “significant success.”

However, he acknowledged some miscalculations.

“I think the thing that we underestimated, at least I underestimated, was the damage that had been done to the Iraqi population by all those years of Saddam's rule,” the vice president said. “So that there weren’t any Iraqis early on who were willing to stand up and take responsibility for their own affairs.”