President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost "our moral bearings" with use of the tactics.

The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said. The president discussed the continuing issue of terrorism-era interrogation tactics with reporters as he finished an Oval Office meeting with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.

The Washington Post questioned why Obama had come to the decision to potentially allow prosecution:

There was no immediate explanation of the reversal in Obama's position on the officials who formulated the interrogation policy, but it came amid mounting pressure from congressional Democrats and human rights activists for greater accountability regarding the program.

The AP documented how Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was barraged with questions about the President's latest on the torture issue:

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in a television interview over the weekend that the administration does not support prosecutions for "those who devised policy." Later, White House aides said that he was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them.

White House press secretary Gibbs was peppered with questions at a Tuesday briefing about whether Obama's latest statements conflicted with signals the administration had sent earlier and Emanuel's statements of Sunday.

"Instead of referring to what anybody might have said ... I think it's important to refer to what the president said," Gibbs replied. He said that Obama has said "he does not believe that people are above the rule of law." And his spokesman reiterated Obama's position that any determination on whether laws were broken "would be rightly determined by the United States Department of Justice."

 

 

 

[video=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/21/obama-administration-bush_n_189521.html]