Obama did me proud

I was all prepared to spew forth with The Rage today, had the President decided to shield from the public the DoJ torture memos. This piece in the New York Times makes me feel good. Looks like Obama kept his pair, after all (insert obligatory teabagging joke here).

After a tense internal debate, the Obama administration this afternoon will make public a number of detailed memos describing the harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency against al Qaeda suspects in secret overseas prisons.

The interrogation methods were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and today’s release will be the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the interrogation program that some senior Obama administration officials have said used illegal torture.

The documents are expected to include Justice Department memos from 2002 and 2005 authorizing the C.I.A. to employ a number of aggressive techniques- including sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures and “waterboarding,” the near-drowning technique.

[...]

The debate about just how much detail to include in the public release bitterly divided an Obama administration still in early months. Fueling the urgency of the discussion was today’s court deadline in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued the government for the release of the Justice Department memos.

Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, has pressed the White House for weeks to redact sensitive details about specific interrogation techniques. He argued that revealing such information would pave the way for future disclosures of intelligence sources and methods, and would jeopardize the C.I.A.’s relationship with foreign intelligence services.

But the most immediate concern of C.I.A. officials is that the revelations could give new momentum to a full-blown congressional investigation into covert activities under the Bush Administration.

Other Obama administration officials, including Gregory B. Craig, the White House counsel, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder, argued that releasing the documents not only would satisfy the government’s obligation in the lawsuit, but would also put distance between President Obama and some of his predecessor’s most controversial policies.