Abu Wabu

Can You Feel This Pin, Prick?

Via the Weekly Standard

The Washington Post's front page story on Obama's release of the interrogation documents claims the move was motivated in large part by Dick Cheney's very public criticisms of Obama's surrender in the War on Terror. The Post:

A source familiar with White House views said Obama's advisers are further convinced that letting the public know exactly what the past administration sanctioned will undermine what they see as former vice president Richard B. Cheney's effort to "box Obama in" by claiming that the executive order heightened the risk of a terrorist attack.

The Weekly Standard:

If President Obama and his aides were confident that the decisions they'd made regarding the detention and interrogation of high-value terrorists were correct -- that they had, in fact, made America safer and that the American public shared their disdain for the aggressive tactics approved by the previous administration -- the release of these memos would have been viewed as an unnecessary distraction. Instead, the Obama White House feared that criticism from Dick Cheney, a man the left considers so toxic as to be an albatross around the neck of the Republican party, was so dangerous that it had to be countered with the release of memos that posed not only a political risk to their own administration but also a national security risk to the United States.

In the event, the American public seems to take a Cheneyesque view of the document dump. Rasmussen reports that 58 percent of Americans "believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States." That means that Cheney already boxed in the Obama administration, prompting an overreaction that has turned the debate over detention policy into a runaway train. A public that seems to adore this administration is, on this issue, firmly against it.

The strategy of "boxing in" a political opponent requires that your opponent holds an untenable position -- that the only way for him to get out of the box is to move to your more responsible position, at which point he can be accused not only of being wrong, but of being naive and indecisive. Cheney is now asking for the release of additional memos showing the fruits of the harsh techniques his administration employed in it's considerably less apologetic war against al Qaeda. The box is closing even tighter.

How now will Obama get out of this hole? That's easy: he'll keep digging. But one thing is for sure: it's great to know that Big Dick is still in charge of the administration.