WASHINGTON — Moving to claim what he described as "the moral high ground," President Obama took a series of steps Thursday to dismantle the most widely condemned components of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
Obama issued a trio of executive orders to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year, permanently shut the CIA's network of secret overseas prisons and end the agency's use of interrogation techniques that critics describe as torture.
But on a day meant to demonstrate a clean break from the policies of his predecessor, Obama put off many of the most difficult decisions about what the U.S. will do with detainees, and left room to revisit whether the CIA still should have permission to use coercive methods when questioning captives.
Nonetheless, human rights advocates hailed the steps Obama took. And the president was applauded during a State Department visit when he told diplomats: "I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture."
In a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Obama described the orders as more than the fulfillment of a presidential campaign commitment. He said they reflected "an understanding that dates back to our Founding Fathers -- that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it's easy, but also when it's hard."
That the orders were issued on Obama's second full day in office underscored the new administration's intent to send a powerful signal to overseas allies. But Obama also made sure to include an admonition to adversaries, vowing no letup in the fight against Al Qaeda.
"We intend to win this fight," Obama said. "We're going to win it on our own terms."
The flurry of orders prompted immediate changes at the CIA and elsewhere. Just hours after the documents were signed, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden issued a statement to the agency's workforce, instructing officers to comply "without exception, carve-out or loophole."
Although the orders left the impression of swift action, many of their most important provisions will take time to implement.
The Obama administration will give itself a year, for example, to close Guantanamo Bay -- a timeline that will allow the government to determine which detainees should be tried, which should be transferred to other countries, and what to do with suspected terrorists captured by the U.S. in the future.
