The Torture Story - A Major Distraction?

In case you're new to Blogger and its conventions, I have hidden a link to the April 17 edition of Today's Papers, from Slate.com, under the title above. If you click on the title, you'll go to a summary of the main national newspapers for that date. The digest was compiled by Daniel Politi, and the title was "Getting Away With Torture."

The title alone tells us the attitude, and this is an attitude common on the Left: "Why are these guys getting away with terrible things? Shouldn't they be punished? And what about Dick Cheney?"

Personally, I rather like the President's position, though President Obama hasn't firmed his position up as much as some would like. We're not going to start a witch-hunt for people who were acting in good faith and had legal opinions in their pockets to justify what they were doing. On the other hand, if someone thinks that he or she has knowledge of a crime, that information can be laid before an appropriate law enforcement agency, and we'll see if some broke the rules.

Mind you, it may be difficult for people who were rendered into the custody of the Egyptian or Syrian authorities to find a friendly U.S. law enforcement guy to talk to, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

My main concern here is that this issue will become the equivalent of "gays in the military." That is, the left will get all excited about doing something the right really hates, and the right will get all fired up to stop them. Then, while everyone is all involved in arguing about this issue, the president's other initiatives lose steam. Will it play out that way? We'll have to wait and see.