Balance of Power

But the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees have been pretty emphatic, even after Obama’s statement, in their insistence upon investigations and prosecutions as the only way to make sure the United States never engages in torture again.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., has been the most outspoken on this point. In a statement his office issued last Friday, Conyers said he didn’t “understand” Obama’s arguments. “If our leaders are found to have violated the strict laws against torture, either by ordering these techniques without proper legal authority or by knowingly crafting legal fictions to justify the torture, they should be criminally prosecuted,” Conyers said. “It is simply obvious that, if there is no accountability when wrongdoing is exposed, future violations will not be deterred.”

And the more low-key Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., says he plans to keep pushing his proposal to establish a commission to investigate the interrogation techniques. “We cannot continue to look the other way,” Leahy said last week. “We need to understand how these policies were formed if we are to ensure that this can never happen again.”

So far, Democratic congressional leaders have sided with Obama’s “look forward” arguments. But if their own committee chairmen — not to mention the Democratic grassroots — keep pushing for investigations, they may have to scrap the White House’s argument that the authors of the interrogations policies shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions.

After all, Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 in part by promising to restore “accountability” to the Bush administration’s policies. It has to be awkward for them now to argue that punishing torture isn’t a good use of their time.