HOLD OBAMA TO ACCOUNT

Obama's release of the the interrogation memos made the enhanced interrogation techniques described (most famously waterboarding, but also walling and sleep deprivation)useless since terrorist suspects would know the limits of the milder techniques.  He also opened up the interrogators themselves to congressional investigation and as much as called them torturers on national television last night.  Obama himself won't be targeting these officials.  The lead will be taken by congressional Democrats and maybe by Attorney General Holder.  Obama might even make some sympathetic noises about the forthcoming troubles of the interrogators.  But it will ultimately be Obama's responsibility and he should be held politically accountable.

Obama's policy on detainee treatment has been much more radical than it need have been, even given his objections to waterboarding.  He could have abandoned waterboarding (and more quietly even the milder enhanced interrogation techniques) while sticking up for the people who implemented the program under the legal understanding of the time.  Obama instead not only abandoned but also revealed the whole of the program and left the people who served twisting in the wind.  The sensitivity to terrorist suspects and the indifference to those who questioned the terrorist suspects is striking.  It should be a political disaster in the making, but Obama could get away with it..

Obama likes to operate by indirection and to let others take the heat for him.  He stayed out of the stimulus drafting process, which allowed him to take credit for what was popular in the bill, while letting congressional Democrats take the hit for the bill's less popular features.  He got a liberal big spending bill without getting dirty from all the waste that big spending in big haste produces.  Republicans thought they were being smart by attacking Obama for not being sufficiently involved in the budget process.  This only demonstrated what creatures of Washington the congressional Republicans had become.  Normal people don't care about the tick toc details of the budget process.  Normal people saw bickering members of Congress and a President who was above the ugly fray.  Obama got away with the fact that the fray was of his making and served his purposes.

And he may be doing it again.  The slow motion persecution of the interrogators (if it happens) will be conducted by committee chairman from safe Democratic seats, and by Eric Holder claiming the professional responsibility of his office - we know how much Holder cares about those things ,what with his treatment of the Office of Legal Counsel during the D.C. congressional voting controversy.  They will be the first targets of conservative wrath, but that would be a strategic mistake.  Obama's own decisions will have set these events in motion and he should be seen to bear the brunt of the responsibility. 

I think that if the issue is put squarely, Obama is not on the side of public opinion.  I have only anecdotal evidence, but I am struck by how many people I know who really like Obama, have contempt for Republicans, but are ambivalent about waterboarding and are incredulous that techniques like walling (where a terrorist suspect is shove up against a  wall) and sleep deprivation should be out-of-bounds when seeking intelligence from a terrorist suspect.  Opinon polls like Rasmussen's http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics2/58_say_release_of_cia_memos_endangers_national_security  show that  58% of the public is against further investigations of detainee interrogations.  

If the investigations do happen, every difficulty faced by the interrogators who folllowed the laws and procedueres as they were understood at the time should be placed at Obama's feet and not those of his henchmen.  Obama needs to be held accountable for the sick absurdity of his choices, which would have things so much easier for terrrorist suspects, and so much harder for those who (to the best of their knowledge) lawfully tried to protect us from them