WASHINGTON - PRESIDENT Barack Obama left the door open on Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations.
Mr Obama said the United States has lost 'our moral bearings' with use of the tactics.
The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods 'is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that,' Mr Obama added.
The president discussed the continuing issue of terrorism-era interrogation tactics with reporters as he finished a White House meeting with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.
Mr Obama also said he could support a congressional investigation into the Bush-era terrorist detainee program, but only under certain conditions, such as if it were done on a bipartisan basis.
He said he worries about the impact that high-intensity, politicised hearings in Congress could have on the government's efforts to cope with terrorism.
The president had said earlier that he didn't want to see prosecutions of the CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, so long as they acted within parameters spelled out by government superiors who held that such practices were legal at the time.
The vexing issue of how terrorism-era detainees held by the United States were interrogated has presented Mr Obama with a quandary, both political and pragmatic.
He harshly criticised these practices as the campaigning Democratic presidential candidate, and still feels pressure from his party's liberal wing to come down hard on it, even after the fact.
But he also is being criticised by Republicans, including people as high-ranking as former Vice President Dick Cheney, who say the Bush administration does not get enough credit for keeping the country from a second 9/11-style attack. --AP
