Judging the war on terror

The Obama administration has deleted the term "global war on terror" from the government lexicon but is finding it more difficult to wipe the slate on some of the dark activities that rhetoric was used to justify. Since his election, President Obama has said he would prefer to look forward instead of backward at charges that the Bush administration used illegal detention and torture to prosecute its campaign against terrorism. That's an understandable political impulse, but it may prove difficult to sustain.

April 4, 2009