On April 29, 2009, President Barack Obama “acknowledged for the first time that the harsh interrogation techniques he has banned might have yielded useful information, but that he was nonetheless willing to rule them out on moral grounds. It was a nuanced performance as Obama walked viewers of his prime-time news conference through a policy that has led him to declare tactics such as waterboarding torture but to stop short of advocating prosecution of the architects of the practices. He conceded that ‘it may be harder’ to get information, but what ‘makes us, I think, still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals, even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.’ ”
– Peter Wallsten and Greg Miller, “Obama Gives Nuanced Defense of his Stance on Torture,” The Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2009