In other words, even as Obama leaned on Putin to avert more wars in the Middle East, the U.S. government was seeking to embarrass and undermine Putin at home. Not surprisingly, this double-dealing has provoked the Russian government's suspicion and confusion, made worse because the latest U.S. media swagger in support of the coup regime in Kiev has forced Obama to puff out his own chest and do some breast-beating at Putin's expense.
One Putin adviser compared Obama's treatment of Putin to a married man with a mistress who -- when things get touchy -- pretends not to know the mistress.
Now, Obama's reluctance to confront the CIA over its Bush-era crimes has created another controversy. CIA Director John Brennan is resisting release of investigative reports critical of the CIA's torture policies, a standoff that, in turn, has led to alleged CIA efforts to intimidate and spy on staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has dubbed the public clash between Sen. Feinstein, defending the committee's investigation, and Director Brennan, defending the CIA's reaction to the investigation, "a true Obama scandal." Milbank noted the seriousness of the controversy as Feinstein accuses "Obama's CIA of illegal and unconstitutional actions violating the separation of powers by searching the committee's computers and intimidating congressional staffers with bogus legal threats."
At the heart of this "scandal" is Obama's decision to let Brennan have control over an investigation that threatened to embarrass if not directly implicate Brennan in Bush's torture of detainees. The problem could have been avoided if Obama had simply asserted his presidential authority to declassify the torture reports in a timely fashion.
But Obama seems to feel that even though he's been Commander in Chief for half a decade he still must tread softly to avoid upsetting the Bush holdovers and their many influential friends in Official Washington. It's an attitude that historians may find puzzling.
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