Moving On ...

Norm Geras isn't quite so ready:

As regrettable as Obama's fudging of this issue - his failure, that is, to state forthrightly what is being sacrificed to the political goal of avoiding disunity - are the large numbers of liberal commentators who simply endorse what he did, as if it were to them the most routine matter. Of all people, Philippe Sands:

Obama is right not to target the interrogators in the sense that real responsibility lies much higher up.

No, that is not how 'real' responsibility is distributed. Those who order torture are indeed responsible; and so are those who torture. You'd expect Sands to know this. There's more of the same from Michael Tomasky, who gives out both the 'real' blame and the superior authority justifications. And from Ken Gude. And from the LA Times. And from the Boston Globe. Not to prosecute torture flies in the face of both international law and ordinary morality. But here it's like water off a duck's back - as if the politics were everything and law and morality of no account.