Obama wants to leave torture policy behind

Who would've thought that President Obama would find himself backed into a corner over torture of "enemy combatants"? As a candidate, Obama was a critic of the Bush administration's contention that "harsh questioning" was necessary to squeeze information out of suspected terrorists and prevent a follow-up to the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush administration lawyers contended that harsh interrogation, formerly known as torture, was legal because the captives were not prisoners of war as defined by the Geneva Accords but were essentially foreign criminals not covered by either international treaties or U.S. law.

Obama and other critics, including presidential foe John McCain, who has more personal experience with "harsh interrogation" than any other U.S. politician, complained that the interrogation techniques were not effective and egregiously harmed America's reputation as a nation that valued human rights.

Having disavowed harsh interrogation, Obama, it would seem, should be able to put this whole matter behind him. But not so fast. Some members of Congress and other critics want to prosecute CIA agents and Bush administration officials and/or launch a congressional investigation of the entire interrogation process.

Obama sensibly ruled that CIA agents, who had been advised by the U.S. government that it was legal for them to use any means necessary to ferret out terrorism details, should not be held liable for doing what the administration told them they should do. Prosecuting CIA agents for what they reasonably believed to be legal orders would be a sure way to ruin the intelligence community.

Well, if you're not going to prosecute the agents, then you ought to prosecute the Justice Department lawyers who issued the opinion, congressional critics said. This also looks like a slippery slope. Should we prosecute the solicitor general each time he loses a case in the Supreme Court? After all, his opinion has been declared unconstitutional!

Obama would like to put the previous administration's interrogation policies behind him. He has enough on his plate for the present and future. But some Democrats in Congress see whipping the dead horse of Bush administration policies as a sure way of extending their party's majority. Congressional hearings going back to Watergate and the Army-McCarthy hearings have focused public attention and swayed public opinion. They offer an opportunity for creation of new political stars.

But Obama knows they also distract attention from other issues, such as the recession, health care and energy independence, that are more important at the moment.