I’ve often suspected this might be the case:
So Obama plays defense on torture, urging that we move forward, while releasing crucial information and letting others use up the vacuum. Cheney blunders in … and even Lieberman has to take up arms against him. This is how this president operates. After Clinton and McCain, Cheney is the latest victim. And by demanding more and more transparency, the former vice-president slowly exposes … himself.That last bit is spot-on. There’s not much that the GOP can say if Obama releases more classified torture documents — Cheney has been calling for them to be released for weeks. All we are left with, I guess, is the shameful argument of “Torture Works!”
Metavirus filed this under: Barack Obama, Bush, Torture, War Crimes
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Um, no. Obama does not appear to have the first clue how to approach the torture issue . He turns 180 on campaign promises (wire taps, renditions). He says the so-called torture memos are wrong and then his justice department adopts the precise same legal reasoning in federal court (to wit, that torture is a specific intent crime). He denounces military commissions as a candidate and then decides to stick with the military commission structure (plus a few cosmetic tweaks).
He leaks top secret memos for partisan political purposes (seems to me a high-ranking GOP operative went to jail for something similar to this), thereby alienating the men and women charged with defending us. And now CIA operatives are daily leaking their own memos that are highly embarrassing to Speaker Pelosi and the President.
What you're witnessing is not a grand strategy to trap the opposition (a la the Rope a Dope). You're seeing a master of campaigning come up against the hard reality of making executive decisions. So far the results are not encouraging.
well, that's a conventional way to look at it.
In releasing these memos he has not named any field agents, indangering them, as the high ranking GOP operative did. And operating in the minefeild that is the CIA, he at least can admit to mistackes, which the form president could never do.