Too Harsh On Clinton and Torture

Readers know I occasionally walk back some posts written in the heat of the moment. I think, after sleeping on it, that I was too harsh on Senator Clinton's comments in the Washington Post about the treatment of detainees. She is clearly committed to reinstating the Geneva Conventions, and has in the past given one of the best speeches on torture I have heard. She was unfairly misquoted in the WaPo. Here's the speech:

A better way of expressing the point I was trying to make is that I wasn't the only one parsing her words on the subject to see whether she had left herself an opening. Given her past, that is not an unreasonable thing to do. I recall having to parse carefully every legalistic statement her husband used to make to avoid telling the truth. This is part of the burden she carries from her own past. And in this election, we don't have to carry it for her again. We have alternatives.