Obama on Torture

Interesting comment from Obama right now about why he opposes waterboarding:

Not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways.

Obama has obviously seen all the internal reports by now, and he’s carefully not saying that waterboarding didn’t work.  This suggests that it may indeed have produced useful information.

Now there’s a followup question directly asking whether waterboarding produced anything useful.  He’s dodging a little bit (reports are classified, can’t discuss it, etc. etc.), but making it sound as if it probably did.  On the other hand, after a bit of throat clearing toward the end of his answer, he says he’s seen nothing that “would make me second-guess the decision that I’ve made” to ban waterboarding.  Which might suggest either that waterboarding produced only moderate amounts of useful information, or that he’s convinced we could have gotten the same information with other methods.

Not sure what to make of all that, or even if I’m interpreting it correctly.  Just passing it along.