WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Wednesday night that waterboarding authorized by former President George W. Bush was torture and that the information gained from terror suspects through its use could have been obtained by other means.
It now be harder to obtain such information, he conceded at a White House news conference marking a whirlwind first 100 days in office.
Obama also expressed optimism that Chrysler could remain a “going concern,” possibly without filing for bankruptcy. He said “unions and creditors have come up with a set of potential concessions that they can live with,” adding, “All that promises the possibility that you can get a Chrysler-Fiat merger.”
The president gave assurance that, one way or another, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists. He said he was confident Pakistan would handle the issue on its own, but he left the door open to the U.S. taking action to secure the weapons if need be.
The prime-time news conference was the third of Obama’s presidency, and it was the first not dominated by a recession that has thrown millions of Americans out of work.
Progress on economy
At a town-hall-style meeting in Missouri earlier in the day, as well as in the White House East Room, Obama said progress has been made in rebuilding the economy, yet more remains to be done.
“And all of this means you can expect an unrelenting, unyielding effort from this administration to strengthen our prosperity and our security — in the second hundred days, and the third hundred days, and all the days after,” he said in opening his news conference.
He called on Congress to enact his ambitious agenda, including health care legislation, a new energy policy and steps to impose new regulations on the financial industry to prevent a recurrence of the collapse that recently brought the economy to its knees.
Obama’s most notable legislative triumphs to date have been enacted on party-line votes. He said he remains eager for bipartisan cooperation with Republicans, but “I can’t sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn’t work and the American people voted to change.”
Obama also said he was “absolutely convinced” he had acted correctly in banning waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, and in making public the Bush administration memos detailing its use as well as other harsh methods used on terrorist suspects. “Not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees … but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.”
The news conference lasted an hour and covered topics ranging from the outbreak of swine flu — which Obama referred to as the H1N1 virus, evidently in deference to U.S. pork producers — to abortion and the recent flare-up in violence in Iraq.
Specter no rubber stamp
On the auto industry, he was notably more upbeat about Chrysler’s prospects for survival than an administration report issued nearly a month ago.
“I’m feeling more optimistic,” he said.
On a political matter, Obama said he thought that Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch from Republican to Democrat would “liberate him to cooperate on critical issues like health care, like infrastructure and job creation, areas where his inclinations were to work with us but he was feeling pressure not to.”
Specter gave majority Democrats 59 votes in the Senate, pushing them one step closer to the 60 needed to overcome Republican filibusters. But Obama said he did not expect a rubber stamp Senate, an acknowledgment that his ambitious legislative agenda poses challenges.
The president also said he hopes Congress will take action this year on immigration.
Presidential aides have derided the 100-day marker as a media-created “Hallmark holiday” in which the White House participates reluctantly. But they also recognize it is a time frame by which all modern presidents are judged, at least initially, and which can produce negative narratives that dog administrations for years. So the White House has jumped into the celebration with both feet, making high-level Obama advisers available anywhere they were needed over the last week and crafting the president’s day to maximum advantage.
