Believe It or Not

Michael Abramowitz and Charles Babington write in The Washington Post: "With a series of forceful speeches on terrorism and a dramatic announcement that he has sent top-tier terrorism suspects to the Guantanamo Bay prison, President Bush this week has demonstrated anew the power of even a weakened commander in chief to set the terms of national debate. . . .

"As Bush framed the choice, anyone against his proposal would be denying him necessary tools to protect American security. . . .

"White House officials have rejected the idea that the ongoing series of speeches are primarily political in nature, saying Bush has wanted to set the war in Iraq in proper context. White House counselor Dan Bartlett said the president has been anxious to help the public understand the scenes of violence from Lebanon and Iraq this past summer. But he also said the administration was determined to answer Democratic charges. 'It is very important to define the terms of the debate and not be defined by others,' Bartlett said."

Michael Tackett writes in the Chicago Tribune: "It apparently suits the White House now to acknowledge the existence of the CIA prisons. Before, the mere mention of the subject engendered a fury of recrimination from the administration. . . .

"The White House, and by extension Republicans running for Congress in November, will talk about these matters, but on their terms, hoping to force Democrats into the kind of defensive crouch that has kept them in the minority."

In the New York Times, David E. Sanger sees various agendas at work: "He is trying to rebuff a Supreme Court that visibly angered him in June when it ruled that his procedures for interrogation and trials violated both the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.

"And he is trying to divert voters from the morass of Iraq and to revive the emotionally potent question of what powers the president should be able to use to defend the country."

About the CIA Prisons

Craig Gordon writes for Newsday: "Bush yesterday pulled back the curtain on a CIA program to detain and question the world's worst terrorists out of public view, in nations he won't name, with methods he won't describe.

"Bush called them an 'alternative set' of interrogation tactics. Critics have another name: torture."

R. Jeffrey Smith and Michael Fletcher write in The Washington Post: "Bush largely defended his administration's controversial detainee policies. But he spoke on the same day that the Defense Department, under pressure from Congress and the Supreme Court, separately ruled out the military's future use of interrogation methods that officials have said were practiced on the CIA's detainees -- including the use of temperature extremes and waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

"Together with the emptying of the secret CIA sites, the imposition of the new interrogation rules amounted to a policy shift for the White House. The administration has come under substantial foreign and judicial criticism for insisting on the right to hold detainees at will and to subject them to interrogations that international experts have repeatedly called abusive and illegal.

"But Bush also said he wants the CIA in the future to have the authority to question terrorists under a program separate from the military's that would not be subject to the interrogation rules the administration put forward yesterday. . . .