Two reactions after reading several, torture-related WaPo articles this morning:

First, I was compelled to publish updates to my post on this topic yesterday. Both the updates and original are offered below.

Second, I couldn’t help but wonder if, in rejecting a truth commission, Obama is experiencing some of what Gerald Ford experienced, when he decided to pardon Nixon. The rationale for both, it seems, is quite similar, anchored in an overarching concern that poking at national wounds will delay rather than advance the healing process.

UPDATES

No “truth commission,” per Obama yesterday.

From page two of the same article, Pelosi explains what she did and did not hear during prior briefings.

Because he thought it was inevitable, regardless of what Obama’s administration did, Sec. Def. Gates agreed with the release of “the memos” — and JCS Chair Mullen concurred.

ORIGINAL POST

Ed Morrissey writes:

If crimes were committed, then members of Congress, the White House, CIA leadership and the interrogators are the ones who have to answer for them, and we can only know that when all of the data is revealed. If Obama’s not willing to do that, then he never should have opened that can of worms in the first place.

From where I stand, the “if crimes were committed” question has already been answered. We don’t need all of the data to make that determination. We do, however, need all of the data to determine the range of culpability — i.e., does it extend (as I suspect it will) to certain sitting members of Congress in both parties. And in the context of his entire post, that seems to be Morrissey’s point, despite the “if clause” at the beginning of the above-culled excerpt.

Bottomline: Morrissey’s point is yet another argument for the already suggested, bipartisan “truth commission” — something to which Obama has signaled he is open, if I remember correctly, modeled on the lines of the 9/11 Commission.