Bush's 'Secret'

" President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged previously secret CIA prisons around the world and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects -- including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks -- have been transferred from the system to Guantanamo Bay for trials .

"This is an absurd lede. President Bush said that a small number of high-value detainees 'have been held and questioned outside the United States.' This is not exactly a news flash. We knew that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al. were not at Guantanamo, and no one ever imagined that they were inside the U.S. The fact that this handful of top-level terrorists was being held by the CIA, somewhere outside the U.S., has been known and widely reported for years."

Then why the huge uproar over Dana Priest's story last November?

Lots of bloggers weighing in on Bush's terror talk, including Josh Marshall :

"It occurred to me a couple days ago that maybe the last Hail Mary pass these jokers in the White House would come up with was engineering a bum's rush October congressional debate on the rules to govern trials of captured enemy combatants and accused terrorists.

"You can pretty much figure how it would work. Come up with a bill that would be pretty much impossible for Democrats to vote for. Maybe the procedure would involve allowing Dick Cheney to evaluate the evidence and determine whether a particular individual was a threat. That or perhaps ritual dunking. In any case, you intentionally write a bill that Democrats can't stomach. Then you figure some Dems just won't be willing to vote against it, so you split those folks off and sow dissenssion and acrimony in the opposition. Then you cue up the 30 second commercials, customizable for each candidate, 'Terrorists are at our gates and ENTER CANDIDATE NAME HERE voted against President Bush's terrorist punishment bill. We can't trust ENTER CANDIDATE NAME HERE. On November 7th, vote for ENTER GOP CANDIDATE NAME HERE.'

"I can't say I don't think it might not be effective. But apparently it won't be that easy for them to pull off.

"I don't know about you. I've been in sort of a haze. But am I wrong to think the old song and dance just isn't quite working for them this time?"

Arianna Huffington has this take:

"As much as Republican candidates would like us to forget it, the White House made Iraq the centerpiece of our war on terror -- a strategy with tragic consequences. It has left our military depleted, our first responders underfunded, our ports and railways vulnerable, and has diverted our resources from pursuing the real enemy.

"The administration's attempts to fight off the public's anger over Iraq have become increasingly anxious and defensive -- not surprising giving the Pentagon's latest assessment of Iraq, and the fact that 52% of Americans have now seen through the administration's smoke and mirrors, and recognize that the war in Iraq has been a distraction in the fight against terrorists.

"Just listen to the tone of the administration's terrorism strategy update, released before Bush's speech. It has all the earmarks of a guilty 5-year-old trying to prove that the broken lamp was not really his fault. Terrorism, insists the report, 'is not simply a result of hostility to U.S. policy in Iraq. The United States was attacked on September 11 and many years earlier, well before we toppled the Saddam Hussein regime. Moreover, countries that did not participate in coalition efforts in Iraq have not been spared from terror attacks.' So there! I have no doubt that if the 23-page document could have stuck out its tongue, it would have.