Paul Krugman is persuasive this morning.

He argues that we must investigate the torturing by the Bush administration because we are a nation of moral ideals and of laws and we can’t put those aside because of other crises, as in the economy, or a practical desire to keep partisan bitterness and enmity as contained as possible.

You have no moral ideals at all, he writes, if you put them aside for convenience. Anyway, he writes, can’t our nation attend to all its problem at once? And, he asks, how would an investigation of torture keep Geithner from working on the economy and the Senate from working on health care? Oh, and he also wonders what Obama has gained by trying to reach out to Republicans in the first place.

Failing any good answers to those questions, I am beginning the process of being persuaded that, as much as I dread it, we ought to open a formal probe into the decisions and practices by which the Bush administration presumed to say torture was all right and certain tortures were carried out.

But, for goodness sakes, we mustn’t do this with a congressional committee, House, Senate, select or ad hoc. Put it over in a blue ribbon independent panel with generals and admirals and ministers and eminences. Colin Powell, Wes Clark, Rick Warren. Rick Warren? Oh, why not?