While being questions by the Senate, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton when asked about former Vice President Cheney’s request to release certain memos pertaining to the effectiveness of interrogations stated “I don’t consider him particularly reliable source of information”. Obviously her answer was driven by politics. Her comments are regrettable in the eyes of the country, a country that would like to know the truth of the matter. Clinton has continued the tone of the current Whitehouse stance on the effectiveness of past interrogation techniques; the stance is accurately summed up as “I am going to keep talking and not answer your question because my administration might change its mind tomorrow”.

The Obama administration is currently struggling to find its footing on this topic. Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, said over the weekend that the administration was not seeking any prosecutions on the matter. President Obama said on Tuesday that those who authorized the interrogation techniques could possibly be prosecuted. Leaders of the intelligence community cannot decide amongst themselves if the techniques were effective or not. Finally the Secretary of State cannot figure out her own opinion on releasing memo’s that could clear up the matter.

For an administration bent on paving the way for a transparent government, this does not help their cause. Obviously the administration has fallen into the trap of politicizing this matter. They dug their hole themselves by releasing the select memo’s that portraying only specific information. As the president currently stands, he is very popular; he will increase his credibility if he decides to release all the memos in their entirety. By speaking directly and bluntly to the public on this matter, he will be producing some actual ‘change’. But why would he want to do that right? This does not however, answer the question of whether or not the memos should have been released in the first place. As the world looked on with hope that the greatest nation this planet has ever seen would once again take the lead with respectable leadership, our government has once again taken up arms in their petty political battles and shown that there is nothing to be hopeful about.