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Obama Trying to Vote Present on Torture Prosecution

The one, a/k/a Barack Obama, has gotten himself trapped between a rock and a hard place, Steven Thomma and Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers [1]

WASHINGTON – Hours after he said that he’d never prosecute CIA officers for harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists, President Barack Obama opened the door Tuesday to prosecuting the Bush administration officials who OK’d the techniques.

Obama said it was up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether Bush administration officials should be charged with war crimes or other offenses for approving techniques such as waterboarding

Obama has politicized the War on Terror.   He riled the left into a blood frenzy.  The left can not be appeased and wants a pound of Bush administrating flesh.   The problem is that there aren’t going to be any torture prosecutions.   If Obama were the lawyer he claimed to be, he’d know it.  Hugh Hewitt, Townhall [2]:

There is no serious prosecutor who would bring a charge against any of these Bush Adminstration officials. No one not from the far left side of the political spectrum can even frame the indictment or explain how the tactics less coercive than water-boarding could be considered criminal when Congress, offered the opportunity to declare water boarding a crime, refused to do so. When the left turns up a former United States Attorney or even senior prosecutor not named Ramsey Clark willing to lay out his theory of prosecution, that will be an argument worth responding to. This is a witch hunt, a political prosecution, one that should be a central issue in the campaigns of 2010

If the one needs a pound of flesh, the question becomes who provides the flesh.  Obama really can ill afford to get into a battle with the CIA, Ki  Priestap, Wizbang [3]:

There is one thing we count on when it comes to Barack Obama, and that is he can never be counted on. All those CIA operatives that he spoke to yesterday to reassure them after his release of the classified interrogation memos need to realize that he will not keep his promise to them for long. If it becomes politically expedient for Obama to sell them out and prosecute them for protecting our country, he will do it.

Obama really doesn’t need the Bush administration.   Unlike the CIA, the Bushies are expendable.   Ed Morrissey, Hot Air [4], points out the foibles of that particular approach:

That leaves George Tenet and the OLC attorneys, but they didn’t conduct the torture, and the OLC didn’t order the interrogations, either.  They responded to a request from the CIA to opine on the legality of the procedures.  Holder can prosecute Tenet, but then he’d also have to file charges against several members of Congress who were briefed on the procedures and never objected — including current Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  If Tenet would get prosecuted for ordering the interrogation techniques, then Pelosi and others would have to get prosecuted for being accessories in not taking action to stop them.

I doubt the Obama has the gonads necessary to take on Mrs. Pelosi and Dirty Harry Reid, who have the power to impeach and remove the one from office.  Obama isn’t so dear to either Nancy or Harry that they would not throw him under the bus to save their own sorry hides.