Attorney General John Ashcroft Testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee

— -- During a three hour grilling Attorney General John Ashcroft faced a torrent of questions about the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies, but most of the focus was focused on torture of detainees. Ashcroft, who was making his first appearance before the Judiciary Committee in 15 months, was sharply questioned by Democratic members on the both the Iraq prison abuse scandal and the wider use of torture for Al Qaeda detainees that has been outlined in policy memos by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

An August 2002 memo written by Jay Bybee, leaked hours before Ashcroft's testimony, notes that inflicting moderate pain may not be legally interpreted as torture. The legal opinion was prepared for the CIA to provide guidance on what type of treatment would not be defined as torture. This legal opinion did not go over well with the Democratic committee members, who demanded copies of the memo and accused Ashcroft of possibly being in contempt for not providing them to Congress. The contempt argument seems to have been only made for dramatic effect, though, since the Committee would have to vote to request the memos then issue a subpoena and have it refused before a contempt proceeding could begin.

Ashcroft was adamant in his defense of not revealing internal deliberations or advice provided to the President, telling the committee, "I have stated a reason and that is that. The President has a right to receive advice from his Attorney General in confidence, and so do other executive agencies of government."

Iraq Links and Investigation

After Ashcroft maintained he would not release the memos, Sen. Edward Kennedy pulled out pictures from Abu Ghraib and said, "We know when we have these kinds of orders what happens. We get the stress test. We get the use of dogs. We get the forced nakedness that we've all seen on these. And we get the hooding. This is what directly results when you have that kind of memoranda out there."

Ashcroft reacted by saying, "Let me completely reject the notion that anything that this President has done or the Justice Department has done has directly resulted in the kinds of atrocities which were cited. That is false. It is an inappropriate conclusion."