With a series of executive orders, President Barack Obama wasted no time publically scrapping many of the tools George W. Bush used to fight the war on terror. He stopped the the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, banned secret overseas prisons and rendition, and committed to closing the Guantanamo detention camp within one year. He also established a cabinet-level commission on the disposition of Guantanamo detainees, suspending military tribunals for 120 days while he decides how best to proceed.

Obama’s actions respond to those, at home and abroad, who believe Bush's policies for handling and interrogating terrorist suspects were wrong and, in some cases, amounted to torture. Nevertheless, Obama's executive orders were deliberately vague. While restricting interrogation techniques to those listed in the Army Field Manual (FM 2-22.3), Obama left the door open to allowing the CIA to go beyond the manual's current limits. Although Obama may decide to move Guantanamo detainees to US prisons and try their cases in US courts, he may proceed with military tribunals for some detainees, and he acknowledged that many may be held without trial indefinitely.

Constitutional and legal considerations will influence Obama's decisions. What constitutes torture? What rights do enemy combatants taken on the battlefield, particularly stateless terrorists who don’t wear uniforms, have in the US justice system? What are the limits of presidential authority over enemy combatants?

Unfortunately, Obama, moving quickly to fulfill his campaign promises, issued his executive orders before he thought the problem through. Now he must sort out the details and take care not to overreact, depriving the intelligence community of the legitimate tools they need to protect America.

There are numerous interrogation techniques between torture and asking a detainee for name, rank and serial number, beyond those specified in the manual, that are both legal and appropriate for interrogating terrorist suspects. Techniques like "waterboarding" aren’t the only way to obtain useful intelligence information from a detainee. It’s an attractive technique to some because it’s quick and easy. Other techniques take longer and require more skill. Law enforcement investigators and counterintelligence agents routinely use them every day. Now, unfortunately, not even the good-cop-bad-cop technique is permissible for CIA interrogations of high-value terrorist suspects.

If Obama intends to win the war on terror, or whatever he calls it, he must expeditiously restore permission for CIA interrogators to use legitimate techniques beyond those authorized in the Army Field Manual. CIA interrogators are ineffective without them and must constantly worry about prosecution by the Justice Department if they cross the line. Americans will not continue to hold Barack Obama in high esteem should al-Qaeda strike the homeland and US intelligence agencies fail to uncover and prevent it because they had to work with a patch over one eye.

Both John McCain and Obama vowed to close Guantanamo if elected. Given the black eye it’s given America, perhaps that’s necessary. But deciding to close it before Obama knows what he'll do with its detainees may cause more problems than it's intended to solve. Trying them in US courts is not wise.

The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed case demonstrates why. Reporters with sources inside the Obama administration say that Obama may transfer him to the Southern District of New York criminal court where prosecutors would try him on an existing indictment for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. This would avoid the problem of using evidence, forcefully extracted from him by waterboarding, not admissible in court.

That would be a grave mistake. Failure to convict Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for masterminding the 9/11 attack would open the floodgates to crazies around the world who claim 9/11 was an inside job. Trying him on 9/11 charges by military tribunal--an option already approved by the US Congress--is far more preferable. Obama retook the oath of office out of an “abundance of caution,” concerned that some might believe he wasn’t legitimately President of the United States because he failed to take the oath specified by the Constitution. Imagine what they’ll think if the self-admitted mastermind of 9/11 is never convicted of murdering nearly 3,000 Americans.

Once Obama starts down the road of transferring Guantanamo detainees to US prisons and trying them in US courts, there’s no turning back. There’s no way of knowing where it will lead, and it sets a dangerous precedent. Military tribunals, properly constituted and authorized by Congress, are preferable to criminal trials conducted in an O.J. Simpson-style media circus that could easily result in dangerous terrorists going free on the streets of America. American values do not require us to shoot ourselves in the foot.

The sooner President Obama works out the details of his decisions and accepts that he doesn’t have to completely reject his predecessor’s detainee policies to improve upon them, the safer we’ll all be.