It's true.
The ruthlessness displayed towards domestic political opposition is aimed at those this president believes tinged with evil and the incredibly weak face displayed overseas is the product of naive belief in the goodness of man and the faults of our system which has suppressed them overseas.
I just can't think of any other explanation.

Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.

In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail -- like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.

You can read it all, and make up your own minds about whether or not this is torture, the means were effective, yadda.
But I find it unbelievable that this would be released in the middle of a war except for two things.

This leader and the people who voted for him don't believe there is a war (overseas contingency operation against man caused disasters..another ringing phrase ..measure that against the threat brought to mind's eye by RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS)

This leader and the people who voted for him are anxious to prove to the world how different he is from the previous admin, and are unmindful of the results of this.

Results which surely are to enlighten Al Qaeda, Hizballah and if needs be HAMAS as to the limits we will reach, and to teach PRECISELY how to resist the techniques so 'wonderfully' detailed in this report

READ IT ALL

The release of the documents came after a bitter debate that divided the Obama administration, with the C.I.A. opposing the Justice Department's proposal to air the details of the agency's long-secret program. Fueling the urgency of the discussion was Thursday's court deadline in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued the government for the release of the Justice Department memos.

Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.'s methods and the Justice Department's long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls (which turns out to be a soft wall rigged make a loud noice, and to prevent whiplash), prolonged sleep deprivation (which always ends if the subject shows any sign of hallucination) and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees (which is warmer than the water I go into with a bad heart to get the dock and boat in and out of the water in spring and fall ...this weekend actually and I am LOOKING FORWARD TO DOING IT) alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture.