"Eisboch" wrote in message
...

I thought Obama's press conference last night was very interesting and
also very revealing, now having 100 days under his belt.

A few impressions:

Very much in command and demonstrating superb leadership qualities.
(I have to admit, I misjudged him during the campaign cycle)

Expressed a new level (for him) of respect and understanding of military
personnel from top to bottom in terms of their commitment, professionalism
and pride in doing their job, however distasteful. I found this
particularly interesting because although he has paid the obligatory
tributes before, last night's comments had a different tone and respect.
It's as if he has learned something in the past 100 days. Good for him!

Although on the record of opposing it (and outlawing it) he is still
struggling with the use of torture question. It's obvious. He's still
reading specific past rationales of it's use or not by other world
leaders. At one point he was specifically asked if he would authorize
torture if he knew a major attack on the US was imminent and the torture
of someone would provide the information required to advert the attack.
His answer was complex. The first words out of his mouth was that
"First of all, I will do anything required to protect the people of the
USA". (paraphrased) But then he went on to say that the USA needs to
maintain a moral high ground and that options other than torture are
available.

But. He did *not* rule torture out. His acknowledged first priority is
to protect the USA and it's people, and he will do "anything required" to
accomplish that. Interesting.

It's a tough one, and again he is demonstrating a level of understanding
and wisdom that only comes with having the reigns of responsibility in
one's two hands. He's beginning to realize that now *he* is the decider,
not the polls, media comments, Olbermann and other armchair generals.

Those of us in the media reporting and analyzing and those of us armchair
critics cannot possibly understand the pressure on someone like the POTUS
in deciding these types of questions.

As a commenter pointed out, the chance of the USA using a nuclear device
on another country is virtually zero. However, the concept that they
*could* be used have never been removed from the table.

Final observation. Pakistan. Obama has identified the Taliban in and
around Pakistan as a major potential threat because they could gain
control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. He commented that we can "not
allow" a band of rouge, militant groups to establish political control
over a government whose country has nuclear weapons at their disposal.

Hmmmm. This sounds familiar. Indeed, Obama has had a crash course in
the "real" world in the past 100 days.

Believe it or not, it's for these reasons that my confidence in his
abilities to be a good, strong POTUS, while still pursuing a goal of
diffusing world conflicts has gone up significantly.

I am still having problems with his plans for fixing the economy however.
Can't afford it.

Over and out.

Eisboch


I'm just another dumbass in the ethernet, but I have to wonder: if we have
drugs to make people spill secrets and we have been told by just about every
intelligence agency out there, including our own CIA, that the torturee will
say anything you want him to say to stop the beating, cattle prodding,
electric shock to the ol testees, waterboarding, etc, etc, etc.... why the
hell was this crap ever started?
Was it so the tapes and transcripts could be produced containing exactly
what the torturers were directed to "discover"? This "product" could then be
used to justify just about anything the big dogs wanted to do when trotted
out to the Senate Intelligence Committee.