OBAMA FUMBLES ON INTERROGATIONS - AT 7:28 A.M. ET:  In what the Chicago Tribune calls a "strikingly defensive" explanation of his stand on enhanced interrogations, President Obama fumbled his way through the issue at his press conference last night:

WASHINGTON -- In a strikingly defensive explanation of his stance on Bush-era anti-terrorism tactics, President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday that the harsh interrogation techniques he has banned might have yielded useful information but said he was nonetheless willing to rule them out on moral grounds.

Thanks, Barack, for playing with our lives.  You weren't elected to be national philosopher, but to be president.  Remember?

By conceding that intelligence was in fact gleaned from harsh techniques, however, Obama was in effect acknowledging that he may be vulnerable to arguments coming from former Vice President Dick Cheney and other conservatives that his decisions could make the country less secure.

At least one new survey this week showed that Cheney's arguments may have broad support -- and that the shadow of Sept. 11 still looms larger in the public mind than Obama might initially have realized.

A majority of Americans, 53 percent, said they opposed the release of the interrogation memos, while 40 percent supported it, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey. The poll also found that half of Americans opposed Obama's order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, and that a clear majority opposed the idea of prosecutions for harsh U.S. interrogations.

And there was this whopper:

"London was being bombed to smithereens [and] had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' " the president said. "Churchill understood: You start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country."

In war you say a lot of things.  And then you do things.  And you try to understand what war is, its horror.  And then you try to rebuild your civilization after defending it. 

No one wants to torture.  No one wants us morally degraded.  But saving the lives of thousands or millions has its own morality, something the president refuses to address.

(For those interested in the orthodox liberal mindset on this, please read last night's Angel's Corner, where we announced the Pompous Fool Award.)

April 30, 2009