NP: Metric, Fantasies

I've seen a couple of blog posts linking to Matt Yglesias' take on the turn the torture debate has taken in the last two weeks, and it makes intuitive sense to me. The GOP seems hung up on narrow goals like simply opposing Obama and tarnishing Nancy Pelosi, and since Obama doesn't want a "truth commission" and Pelosi might be damaged by revelations about the briefings, then they're for it? "Damn the consequences" never seemed more appropriate.

That seems so painfully short-sighted, it would seem that either there's really some sort of exoneration in the truth that the GOP either knows about (Dick Cheney certainly believes so) or is counting on, or they are exactly as monumentally stupid as they're being made out to be.

Meanwhile, there's also the notion that Obama has just tricked the GOP into initiating a process that might end up with American officials being accused of war crimes. Much like legalizing marijuana, I think this is another thing that Obama can't do on his own without sacrificing political capital, even if he wanted to. And we don't know that he wants to, but if he does, it's a pretty clever strategy. Any good manager knows that the key to getting what you want is to empower those under you by making them think it was their idea.