Everything's Political

"At times, Mr. Zubaydah, still weak from his wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with air-conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Mr. Zubaydah seemed to turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sometimes, the interrogator would use simpler techniques, entering his cell to ask him to confess.

"F.B.I. agents on the scene angrily protested the more aggressive approach, arguing that persuasion rather than coercion had succeeded. But leaders of the C.I.A. interrogation team were convinced that tougher tactics were warranted and said that the methods had been authorized by senior lawyers at the White House."

Cheneyland

Vice President Cheney yesterday made his first appearance in three years on NBC's "Meet the Press." Here's the transcript , here's the video .

Our adversaries, Cheney said, "want to re-create the old caliphate that stretched from Spain all the way around to Southeast Asia. They want to topple the regimes that are there today, they want to kick the U.S. out of that part of the world, destroy Israel, equip themselves with weapons of mass destructions, etc. In the course of doing that, their strategy for doing that is to break our will."

And who's helping them? Well, Cheney said: "[S]uggestions, for example, that we should withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, simply feed into that whole notion, validates the strategy of the terrorists."

Michael Abramowitz writes in The Washington Post: "Vice President Cheney offered a veiled attack yesterday on critics of the administration's Iraq policy, saying the domestic debate over the war is emboldening adversaries who believe they can undermine the resolve of the American people . . . .

"Cheney unapologetically defended the 2003 invasion that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, saying the administration would have done 'exactly the same thing' even if it knew before the war what he acknowledged knowing now -- that Iraq did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Yet he also gave a bit of ground, as he was pressed repeatedly by interviewer Tim Russert about statements that turned out to be wrong or damaging to his credibility."

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "He sounded uncharacteristically defensive at moments, particularly as he tried to explain statements he had made over the past five years about Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities and ties to Al Qaeda . . . .

"He did not answer questions about why the administration had not made adequate contingency plans for the rise of Sunni insurgents or for the outbreak of sectarian war, questions that President Bush has also sidestepped in interviews dating to the 2004 election campaign.

"Mr. Cheney appeared to blame the former director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, for much of the misleading intelligence leading up to the war."

Waning Influence?

David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt write in the New York Times that "as the nation observes the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. Cheney finds the powers he has asserted under attack and his influence challenged. Congress and the Supreme Court have pushed back at his claim that the president alone, as commander in chief, can set the rules for detention, interrogation and domestic spying . . . .

"Measuring the accumulation or the erosion of power is an imprecise art. But interviews with more than 45 people over the past five months -- including current and former White House aides, foreign diplomats, members of Congress and confidants of Mr. Cheney -- painted a picture of a vice president who, while still influential, has seen his power wane."

But as I wrote in my Friday column , the reports of Cheney's defeats are often exaggerated. For example, Sanger and Schmitt write that Cheney lost bigtime when Bush agreed to new rules about torture drawn up by Senator McCain. But that leaves out the fact that a White House " signing statement ," most likely drafted by the office of the vice president, left the administration's willingness to enforce the law entirely unclear.

Asked about the New York Times story on "Meet the Press," Cheney called it "one of those thumbsuckers that's done periodically. It's probably as valid as the ones that were done saying I was in charge of everything."

Cheney on a Plame

"MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn back home, domestic politics, and talk about the whole situation involving Scooter Libby, your former chief of staff, who was indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald. This was a document that was released in the investigation. It's a New York Times op-ed piece with your handwriting on it. And that handwriting says, 'Or did his wife send him on a junket?' referring to Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, who was a CIA, CIA agent. Did you, in any way, authorize Scooter Libby to release her name or her occupation to the press?

"VICE PRES. CHENEY: Tim, Scooter Libby is, he's a good man. He's a friend of mine. He's somebody -- one of the most competent and capable people I've ever known. He's entitled to the presumption of innocence. But there is a legal matter pending, there is going to be a trial next year, I could well be a witness in the trial, and much as I would like to talk about, and I certainly have strong opinions about the case, I think it'd be totally inappropriate for me to do so.

"MR. RUSSERT: There was a story in the National Journal that Cheney authorized Libby to leak confidential information. Can you confirm or deny that?

"VICE PRES. CHENEY: I have the authority as vice president under executive order issued by the president to classify and declassify information. And everything I've done is consistent with those authorities . . . .

"MR. RUSSERT: Do you think the president should pardon Scooter Libby?

"VICE PRES. CHENEY: I've said all I'm going to say on the subject, Tim."

Intel Watch

Jonathan Weisman writes in Saturday's Washington Post: "A declassified report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence revealed that U.S. intelligence analysts were strongly disputing the alleged links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda while senior Bush administration officials were publicly asserting those links to justify invading Iraq.

"Far from aligning himself with al-Qaeda and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Hussein repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaeda's overtures and tried to capture Zarqawi, the report said . . . .

"As recently as Aug. 21 , Bush suggested a link between Hussein and Zarqawi."

Bush and Gigot

Paul A. Gigot , editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, also had an interview with Bush last week.

Gigot reports that Bush hopes "to revisit Social Security reform next year, when he 'will be able to drain the politics out of the issue."

He writes: "Love or loathe President George W. Bush, you can't say he lacks the courage of his convictions. Down in the polls, with the American people in a sour mood over Iraq, Mr. Bush isn't changing his policy or hunkering down in the Oval Office. Instead he's doubling down, investing whatever scarce political capital he has to frame the November contest as a choice over the economy and taxes and especially over his prosecution of the war on terror."

Bush's Reading List

Some of us have been a little skeptical about Bush's recent reading list, which ostensibly includes Albert Camus's "The Stranger," three works of Shakespeare and dozens of serious nonfiction tomes.

Now, there's more evidence to suggest that Bush and his aides are just making this stuff up as they go along.

In the first story on the topic, Kenneth T. Walsh wrote in U.S. News: "Bush has entered a book-reading competition with Karl Rove, his political adviser. White House aides say the president has read 60 books so far this year (while the brainy Rove, to Bush's competitive delight, has racked up only 50)."

But now, in the Wall Street Journal, Gigot writes: "Mr. Bush is an avid reader of history, and he has a contest with political aide Karl Rove to see who reads the most books. ('I'm losing,' Mr. Bush says.)"

Rove v. Spam

Greg B. Smith writes in the New York Daily News: "The White House political adviser and deputy chief of staff took time from his busy schedule early last year to personally track down a bothersome spammer who made the mistake of hitting subscribers to President Bush's campaign site, the Daily News has learned.

"Sometime after Rove intervened, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan opened a criminal investigation that ultimately led to the arrest of a Florida man while he was at the movies with his then-7-year-old daughter."

Smith writes that "e-mails, phone records and transcripts of secretly recorded phone conversations turned over to defense attorneys make it clear that Rove, in January 2005, was personally involved in finding the culprits who spammed the Bush campaign site."