President Obama struggled for weeks with decision to release memos

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21intel.html?_r=1&hp

<snip>
Aides said Mr. Obama struggled for four weeks about whether to release the memos in response to a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act, consulting with advisers, experts and intelligence professionals. It was on his mind so much, they said, that he talked about it with aides late at night in his hotel room during stops on his recent European trip.

In meetings, they said, he served as “the interrogator,” as one put it, challenging people to defend their views. Advisers diverged, with some like Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. favoring the release of more information and others like Leon E. Panetta, the new C.I.A. director, urging that more be withheld. Aides said Mr. Obama worried about damaging morale at the C.I.A. and his own relationship with the agency.

In the end, aides said, Mr. Obama opted to disclose the memos because his lawyers worried that they had a weak case for withholding them and because much of the information had already been made public in The New York Review of Books, in a memoir by George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, and even in a 2006 speech by President George W. Bush.

The decision to promise no prosecution of those who followed the legal advice of the Bush administration lawyers was easier, aides said, because it would be hard to charge someone for doing something the administration had determined was legal. The lawyers, however, are another story.

....more

does not speak well of his moral character.

He released the memos. He didn't have to. But he did. He could have claimed "executive privilege". But he did not.

but we should congratulate him for it?

You have the right to disagree with his decision. Or that it took him so long to make it? After all, it is "only" the CIA that he is about to piss off. Why not just do it in haste?

The gall. He should follow in Dubya's footsteps and do all his Presidentin' from the gut.

Presidentin' from the gut seems great when we're talking about single-line recaps of complex issues. It's a good thing you don't have Obama's ear; the country suffered enough under eight years of Dubya. I don't think we need four more.

sounds like we have plenty of bushin' going on *without* me having Obama's ear.

Torture is wrong and a crime. Period. It is not a matter for discussion. It shouldn't take Obama--*or anyone*--four weeks to decide whether or not to report a crime against humanity. It shouldn't take the likes of you to make excuses for him when it does.

Why do you think it is an intellectual exercise? Why cannot it be a simple black and white issue? What peripheral issues could possibly block such a simple truth. Torture is wrong and criminal.

Because we're talking politics and not religion.

Those of us with values and morals recognize this for what it is--a *criminal* issue and a moral issue.

Torture is a crime against humanity. It is a crime under US law, and it is indefensible, period. There exist NO extenuating political circumstances. None.

What other crimes do you condone as long as it is politically expedient for your politician du jour? :puke:

but there's a correct response too

Three Bush administration lawyers who signed memos, John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury, are the subjects of a coming report by the Justice Department’s ethics office that officials say is sharply critical of their work. The ethics office has the power to recommend disbarment or other professional penalties or, less likely, to refer cases for criminal prosecution.

The administration has also not ruled out prosecuting anyone who exceeded the legal guidelines, and officials have discussed appointing a special prosecutor. One option might be giving the job to John H. Durham, a federal prosecutor who has spent 15 months investigating the C.I.A.’s destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations.
snip
Other investigations promise to keep the issue alive. The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to release its own report after two years of looking at the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods. And the Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees are pushing for a commission to look into the matter. At the same time, the administration faces pressure from abroad. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ chief official on torture, told an Austrian newspaper that as a party to the international Convention against Torture, the United States was required to investigate credible accusations of torture.

He made the right decision. That's what matters.

focus group and internal poll the issue. These guys are all Chicago politicians and don't do anything without considering the ramifications.

Emanuel and Axelrod = Karl Rove.

<snip>
Others pushing for more investigation included Philip D. Zelikow, the former State Department counselor in the Bush administration. On his blog for Foreign Policy magazine and in an interview, Mr. Zelikow said it was not up to a president to rule out an inquiry into possible criminal activity. “If a Republican president tried to do this, people would be apoplectic,” he said.

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., who was chief counsel to the Church Committee, the Senate panel that investigated C.I.A. abuses in the 1970s, said Mr. Obama was “courageous” to rule out prosecutions for those who followed legal advice. But he said “it’s absolutely necessary” to investigate further, “not for the purpose of setting blame but to understand how it happened.”

He was just dealing with a bunch of insecure gullible assholes who desperately wanted to feel
like they are better than others. That was easy the easy part......just couldn't last forever....once the fuck ups committed by the last administration were felt by the general public.

Karl Rove needs to go back to College and get himself a degree. Right now, he's not smart enough to lick the boots of either Rahm or Axelrod. They are head and shoulder superior to his dumb inarticulate ass.

can have as little as a 24-hour turnaround. "Polling" is an appropriate response when a politician gives a statement Wednesday on a story that broke Monday. It's cute that you think you know something about politics, though.

Throw in a "San Francisco values" why don't you?!

would also struggle with this decision. But they like to pretend they're so fucking perfect. Give me a break.

** snip
In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done. American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security. When is the last time a President did that?


article in full here:http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/17/prosecutions/index.html

Why did he release the documents??

that can't be denied regarding torture, its use will be enormously powerful politically. Not everything is going to change overnight,and not every move forward will be directly from Obama, as this information now belongs to the international community too. I'm sure you have heard Cheney, a man who doesn't do interviews, has been on the air waves often since Obama took office. I am fascinated at the level of paranoia he displays, all the while he continually implicates himself further with every interview, truly incredible times we are watching.

Of course we all here at DU wanted a SP right away, I am impatient too, but we'll see, I am encouraged by this latest move.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5499868&mesg_id=5499868

In Obama's own words in his remarks to CIA employees:

Now, in that context I know that the last few days have been difficult. As I made clear in releasing the OLC memos -- as a consequence of a court case that was pending and to which it was very difficult for us to mount an effective legal defense -- I acted primarily because of the exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos; particularly the fact that so much of the information was public, had been publicly acknowledged, the covert nature of the information had been compromised.

So, sure. Lots of back and forth on this, I imagine.

and not made anything public. Obama could have done that.