Obama Displeases the Left

Frank Rich is displeased. The ACLU is calling Obama's reversal on releasing the photos a win for al Quaeda. Get real. 
The only people who care about dragging out the torture issue are those on the left and those on the right.
The rest of Americans could care less or want to see Obama move on. We want things like education reform and healthcare reform.
Obama made it clear, going forward torture will not be tolerated. I'm happy to see that Obama has the kind of focus that he can ignore both sides and make decisions--not based on ideology--but on the evidence at hand.
But there are so many ideologues invested in revenge against Bush. This torture issue has been consumed by politics:

TO paraphrase Al Pacino in “Godfather III,” just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions.

That’s why the president’s flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos — whatever his motivation — is a fool’s errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven’t started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here’s a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come.

There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists. NYT

Pentagon Connection to Abu Ghraib

What's really sick is Bush-Cheney blamed it on the soldiers.

There is a trail from the White House to Abu Ghraib, which means torture was authorized at the highest levels.

Ken Adelman Voting Obama

This pic, one of my favorites, sums up Obama

I have no idea who Ken Adelman is but apparently he's a conservative conservative type. This is so reassuring because it says no matter what you're political leaning, intelligence is still valued. Hip hooray for that.

The more republicans on board, the less backlash if Obama wins. You know there are folks who are going to be mighty irrational.

WaPo: Adelman is the latest Republican foreign-policy heavyweight to endorse Sen. Barack Obama, telling the New Yorker's George Packer that he intends to vote for the Democrat in two weeks.

"When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird," Adelman wrote, according to Packer. "Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I've concluded that that's no way a president can act under pressure."

Adelman was a key part of George Bush's defense agency and has held senior policy positions under Presidents Reagan, Ford and even Nixon. He's a staunch conservative, though he has broken with Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the handling of the Iraq war.

But he told Packer that Sen. John McCain's pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate was the last straw.

"That decision showed appalling lack of judgment," he wrote in an e-mail, according to Packer. "Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office -- I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection
contradicted McCain's main two, and best two, themes for his campaign -- Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick."

Some background on Adelman:

NYorker: Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.