In his strongest public statement to date, President Obama Tuesday indicated his openness to a formal inquiry into his predecessor's administration in regard to harsh interrogation techniques used with terrorist suspects.

After a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah, Obama was asked about potential prosecution of those who authored the so-called torture memos released by the Justice Department last week. Obama repeated his belief that those who carried out orders should not be prosecuted, and said that the fate of those who authored the policies would be determined by the Attorney General as the chief law enforcement officer of the country.

Obama then said as a general rule, "I think that we should be looking forward and not backwards," and that he wanted to avoid over-politicizing the case. Because of that, he a "typical" Congressional hearing process would not be ideal.

"To the extent that there are independent participants who are above reproach and have credibility, that would probably be a more sensible approach to take," he said.

He quickly said that he's not calling for such an independent commission, but that given a choice between that or a process lead by current lawmakers, he'd rather see an independent process so the American people see it as "being done in order to learn some lessons so that we move forward in an effective way," rather than achieve a political end.

During his press briefing later, press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the president had in mind an independent panel in the mold of the 9-11 Commission.

"I think that the President would see a 9/11 Commission ... to be, in all honesty, a model for how any investigation or commission might be set up," he said. "I think we can all understand that the 9/11 Commission was comprised of very respected members that, despite being Democrats or Republicans, put their party identification away in order to answer some very serious questions."

Gibbs also denied that the president was reacting to pressure from liberal interest groups or others in his party's left flank, saying there was no shift in policy.

"I doubt the President has been on moveon.org in the last 24 hours," he said.