On the heels of the Wall Street Journal article asserting Obama would leave the Bush intelligence team basically in place and the Washington Post article contradicting it, we now have a third perspective on how an Obama Administration might deal with things like "enhanced interrogation":
With growing talk in Washington that President Bush may be considering an unprecedented "blanket pardon" for people involved in his administration's brutal interrogation policies, advisors to Barack Obama are pressing ahead with plans for a nonpartisan commission to investigate alleged abuses under Bush.The Obama plan, first revealed by Salon in August, would emphasize fact-finding investigation over prosecution. It is gaining currency in Washington as Obama advisors begin to coordinate with Democrats in Congress on the proposal. The plan would not rule out future prosecutions, but would delay a decision on that matter until all essential facts can be unearthed. Between the time necessary for the investigative process and the daunting array of policy problems Obama will face upon taking office, any decision on prosecutions probably would not come until a second Obama presidential term, should there be one.
So Mark Benjamin at Salon is now reporting that the Obama administration might consider prosecutions of people found to have engaged in what they determine is illegal activity connected to Bush's "brutal interrogation policies," which doesn't rule out the Post's reporting but explicitly rejects the Journal's. I should add that I like the idea of prosecutions for people who broke the law by engaging in or ordering torture, except that the person ultimately responsible would likely escape prosecution no matter what.
I write this to point out that breathless speculation about what Obama will and will not do with regard to this issue isn't very helpful, because clearly no one is sure of what exactly the Obama team's intentions are, and it probably won't be clear until they're finished deciding what it is. Really, we don't know. So let's not freak out until there's something to freak out about.
--A. Serwer
