I’m with Ramesh on Obama’s vacation. Also, I don’t particularly care what his affect is when he makes a statement about terrorism. It won’t matter how passionate he seems, if the policy is flawed (as it is in this case — it’s utterly senseless to kick away an opportunity to learn more from a terrorist who seems vulnerable enough to have given up everything he knows even under mild interrogation). Finally, I think Obama was right to condemn the failures so frankly yesterday. One thing Bush never seemed to realize — partly out of excessive loyalty — is that you don’t have to take ownership of every bureaucratic foul-up in your administration. We’ll see if Obama’s posture results in anything meaningful. What he should be doing is re-evaluating the view of the world he brought to office with him, and re-aligning it with reality given the events of the last year. I’m not hopeful.