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In the months prior to the election, Obama repeatedly denounced the fact that America conducts torture under the Bush Administration. Those sentiments got lost during his recent interview with 60 Minutes, where he devoted precisely one dumbfounding sentence to the subject of torture:
"I've said repeatedly, America doesn't torture, and I'm gonna make sure we don't torture".
The parsing of this statement yields multiple meanings. Including the message that President-elect Obama has developed a more 'nuanced' perspective on torture as defined, and practiced, by the Bush cabal. Obama's embrace of Brennan is also suggestive of such a shift in tone. In fact, it looks like this WaPo article is laying the groundwork for Obama to walk-back his prior tough stance against torture:
***"Even some senior Democratic lawmakers who are vehement critics of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies seemed reluctant in recent interviews to commit the new administration to following the Army Field Manual in all cases. [As pledged by Obama during the Presidential campaign.] Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who will take over as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January...indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility. “I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,” she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures."***
A made-to-measure "extreme case" and "terrorist threat" just came to the pols, and the public, two days ago: in the form of a newly minted Congressional Report, The World at Risk. It predicts a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.
Clearly, this new report can, and will, be used to perpetuate the 'Global War on Terror'. At the same time, it gives the Dems a 'pragmatic' rationale to make allowances for Bush's "enhanced interrogation" techniques. And, worse than that, it allows the Dems to give Bush extra cover by suggesting that some of those techniques may 'need' to be used in an Obama Administration.
Let's hope that critical voices in the netroots will keep up the pressure for follow-through on campaign promises.
