Cheney's Waning Influence?

"'My philosophy is that if we've done something that we can improve, why would we not want to improve it? Why would we not want to adjust it?' Ashcroft told the committee."

Here is Slate's Dahlia Lithwick talking to NPR's Alex Chadwick yesterday: "I think what the House Democrats wanted to hear today was Ashcroft saying, 'I withdrew the original memos because they were bad and they caused torture.' That was certainly the hope. The hope was that they could really get him to explain that those first memos were horrific legal reasoning and that's why he withdrew them."

Chadwick: "And how does Mr. Ashcroft seem to be responding now?"

Lithwick: "Well, he is just so, so deft, Alex. First of all he says, 'Look, we withdrew the bad memo. Doesn't that in itself prove that the system worked? We self-corrected without any oversight.' That's his first argument. And then he really, really kind of down-plays how bad those first memos were. He talked today about how they were, quote, 'unnecessary discussions.' They were, quote, 'overly broad.' That there was just some bad language in there that needed to be corrected, repaired, and fixed."

Carrie Johnson writes in The Washington Post: "In his first Capitol Hill appearance to address national security issues since leaving the Justice Department three years ago, Ashcroft batted away probing questions, blaming his memory and citing the still-classified status of memos and programs the Bush administration adopted after Sept. 11, 2001. . . .

"Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) pressed Ashcroft on whether he or others at the Justice Department provided legal advice to CIA agents who questioned al-Qaeda operative Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, for several months beginning in March 2002. A formal Office of Legal Counsel memo supporting the aggressive interrogation strategies was not issued until August of that year.

"That timeline led Christopher Anders, a senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, to question whether the interrogators operated outside the bounds of the law and whether they could face investigation for what one FBI agent later told the Justice inspector general was 'borderline torture.'"

ABC News reported in April that, after Ashcroft was one of several senior administration officials who micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement in 2002. Ashcroft reportedly asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

Yesterday, Ashcroft refused to confirm that such meetings ever took place. And asked about the verdict of history, he responded: "I think history is already judging this administration as being successful in the deterring and preventing additional terrorist acts."

Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post that Ashcroft is being seen as a voice of reason by some largely because the tenure of his successor, Alberto Gonzales, "ranged from incompetence to lawlessness."

Kate Klonick notes for TPM Muckraker that Ashcroft set the bar for his testimony pretty low, asserting in his prepared statement"that he had 'limited recollection' of the events pertinent to the committee's inquiry. Specifically, 'it's been difficult . . . to distinguish between what I in fact recall as a matter of my own experience, and what I remember from the accounts of others.'"

'Total Failure'

Laurie Kellman writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush has been a 'total failure' in everything from the economy to the war to energy policy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. In an interview on CNN, the California Democrat was asked to respond to video of the president criticizing the Democratic-led Congress for heading into the final 26 days of the legislative session without having passed a single government spending bill.