Obama's 170 degrees (going on 180) on Torture is a sad and scary spectacle

[NYC Liberal]

110. What a bullshit headline. I mean both the OP headline and the NY Times'.

The NY Times headline could just as easily read "Obama Could Reaffirm His Own Reading of a Treaty on Torture".

I like how this post omits the part of the article that talks about the State Department, which is strongly pushing to reject Bush's interpretation:

State Department lawyers are said to be pushing to officially abandon the Bush-era interpretation. Doing so would require no policy changes, since Mr. Obama issued an executive order in 2009 that forbade cruel interrogations anywhere and made it harder for a future administration to return to torture.

And this part:

Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said Mr. Obama’s opposition to torture and cruel interrogations anywhere in the world was clear, separate from the legal question of whether the United Nations treaty applies to American behavior overseas.

“We are considering that question, and other questions posed by the committee, carefully as we prepare for the presentation in November,” Ms. Meehan said. “But there is no question that torture and cruel treatment in armed conflict are clearly and categorically prohibited in all places.”

In fact, the majority of the article talks about the strong opposition within the administration to reading it as Bush did. And everything we know says Pres. Obama's stance is consistently against it as well.