Spell It Out

by digby

Following up on my post below, I just heard Jim Miklasewski on NBC Nightly News say that Obama’s orders today are designed to give himself wiggle room to distance himself from Bush’s policies but not force him to live up to his campaign promises. Seriously. As I said earlier, I don’t know that this is what Obama intended, but it’s what the political media are interpreting his actions to mean.

I’m sure I don’t need to go into the moral dimension of this issue, but I think the administration needs to set the press straight on this if he means to have a successful foreign policy. Trying to split the baby on these issues is impossible and it will undermine his moral authority in the rest of the world if they think he’s being cute. (You can bet the intelligence community will leak any information that indicates he isn’t sincere.)

If he means to make a clean break, he should make it clear to the media that it’s what he means. They aren’t seeing it that way.

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