But Mr. Obama will not use the speech to provide the details lawmakers want.

From EJ Dionne today:

Characteristically, Obama will try to cut through all this with a speech today explaining his decisions, including plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, and proposing, again, that the country move on.

If anyone can work magic with a speech, it's Obama. And he's making his case to a public that already wants to focus on the current domestic crisis and not on leftover issues from a Bush administration many would prefer to forget.

But the fact that Obama is giving the speech reflects the administration's realization that its initial efforts to put these issues to bed have fallen short. Why?

Led by Dick Cheney, many Republicans believe that national security is still the Democrats' greatest vulnerability, and they will try to keep this front open even if it means defending torture. Obama is right to pause before releasing those abuse photographs, and there may be no alternative but to use military commissions in some of the terrorism cases. But in making these decisions, the president has looked more reactive than principled.

[snip]

(Axelrod says,) "What we're trying to do is urge everyone to move forward."

An excellent idea, but even Obama can't simply wish the past away. He needs to be more forthcoming about why he has changed his mind on some issues.

The administration regularly talks about protecting American values and American security. Even a verbal magician such as Obama can't get around the fact that doing both involves hard trade-offs. To get back to the economy, health care, energy and education, Obama has to answer his civil libertarian critics and Dick Cheney at the same time.

It may be Bush and Cheney's fault, but on national security issues, the words "trust me" don't work anymore.

 I really don't see where either the lefties who complain about Obama betraying them have any better of a case than the righties who compain he is a socialist and out to undermine national security.

  Persoanlly, I'd be a lot more worried about someone who did no reevaluate his stances upon becoming President and not only assuming responsibility but learning information that he did not have when describing his positions in more general terms during a campaign.

Where I disagree with Obama is his decision to move forward instead of investigating what happened that allowed our government to torture in our name.  Cheney said a very important sentence in his blowhard speech after the Prez spoke.  Cheney said that given the same circumstances, he would make the same decisions again. That is exactly why we need to prevent future administrators from doing what Bush and Cheney did. The laws that mandate Congressional notification of covert or potentially illegal actions were created to deal with widespread abuses by our intelligence agencies. The House and Senate intelligence committees are entrusted with the faith of the American people to oversee aggressive intelligence operations done in our name, and to ensure that they are necessary, effective and consistent with American laws and values. If Cheney et. al. were able to get the individual CIA staff who briefed the House Select Committee on Intelligence to report that torture was deemed legal but wasn't in use yet, to in effect, lie to Pelosi et. al., then they've easily bypassed the checks and balances meant to prevent illegal government actions.

Using torture is the biggest military policy reversal in our lifetimes, a change that not only endangers our military and taints our great country but is also clearly against signed treaties and international law, and today no one can say for sure if it actually was properly reported to Congress' Intelligence Committees, the final watchdogs on the CIA and military.

terrorists aren't necessarily criminals we can catch and prosecute for a crime

Why not? What was that "TERRARIST PLOT IN NYC" all about but a criminal matter? What was the Oklahoma City bombing but a criminal matter that was handled through our criminal justice system?