Obama Does the Waterboarding Two-Step

I think someone finally told him that a wide net into waterboarding will catch quite a bit of Democrats in its clutches along with the Bush people.

At the White House, spokesman Robert Gibbs sought to underscore Obama's resistance to an independent commission two days after the president himself said such an approach would be preferable to a partisan congressional investigation into the questioning techniques that critics say amount to torture.

Gibbs said that after internal White House debate, Obama determined the independent commission "concept didn't seem altogether that workable in this case."

I have to say that this "change your mind when more info comes in" Obama two-step (you could call it wishy-washy) is kind of jarring. I do think it is much preferable to not changing your mind no matter what. It goes back to the maxim of "when conditions change you change your mind" which I think is a fairly sound policy.

In this case I think someone told him that Pelosi, Jane Harman and whoever else will end up targets of the commission and could face charges by his own AG. It would also hurt CIA operations in the future because the legal leg they have to stand on might end up changing every 4 to 8 years. How can these CIA guys know what is permissible when the judges that tell them what is legal get sent to jail every few years?

It would have also created a poisonous atmosphere of partisan recrimination and questions of who knew what and when and other nonsense. The GOP will fight him on everything if they were targeted over actions that the entire Congress took to protect the country. Finally, it would also raise the specter of the new guy in office will have carte blanche in the future to prosecute the old guy in office. They do that in Chile and Myanmar but not the US.

All Obama would gain is to "get Bush" and make liberals feel all good inside. Those bad-guy "Repugs" had to resort to extreme measures so we could get actionable intel out of murderous terrorists. Now they will be punished!

This commission would make the Daily KOS and HuffPo happy but at the expense of national security, the CIA, ruining any chance of bipartisanship, and the Dems caught approving torture being run out of office. So Obama changed his mind when the situation changes.