Believe It or Not

"But while the policies apply to all Defense Department employees and contractors, there are no safeguards in the event a CIA employee takes custody of a detainee and moves him into a separate, nonmilitary, facility."

The White House Bill

Kate Zernike and Neil A. Lewis write in the New York Times: "Under the measure that President Bush proposed on Wednesday, Khalid Shaik Mohammed and other major terrorism suspects would face trials at Guantánamo Bay in military tribunals that would allow evidence obtained by coercive interrogation and hearsay and deny suspects and their lawyers the right to see classified evidence used against them.

"The proposed tribunals would largely hew to those that the Supreme Court rejected in June. The measure says Congress would, by approving the proposed tribunals, affirm that they are constitutional and comply with international law, which the Supreme Court said they did not."

Maura Reynolds, Richard B. Schmitt and David G. Savage write in the Los Angeles Times: "It is not clear whether the president's plan will gain traction on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have been working for weeks on their own proposals for military commissions to try terrorist suspects."

Legal blogger Marty Lederman offers much wonk fuel, writing for instance that "the draft Administration bill would (i) retroactively legalize all the unlawful acts that were approved and performed from 2001 to the present day (see section 9, page 86); (ii) would cut off all judicial review of U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions (section 6(b), page 79); and, most importantly, (iii) would authorize the CIA -- and, for that matter, other agencies, including DoD itself -- to engage in what the President today euphemistically referred to as the CIA's 'alternative set of [interrogation] procedures.'"

Editorial Watch

The Washington Post writes that even as Bush took some constructive steps, "he also undermined them. He delivered a full-throated defense of the CIA's 'alternative set of procedures' that the world properly regards as torture. With an election pending and families of Sept. 11 victims as his audience, he demanded legislative action on issues of enormous complexity in the few remaining days of the congressional session. And the bill he sent to Congress would authorize the administration to resume some of the worst excesses of the past five years."

The New York Times writes: "If the White House had not wanted to place terror suspects beyond the reach of the law, all 14 of these men could have been tried by now, and America's reputation would have been spared some grievous damage. And there would be no need for Congress to rush through legislation if the White House had not stymied all of its attempts to do just that before."

And the New York Daily News writes -- approvingly! -- that "Bush presented an implicit question to those who say the secret prisons betray all that America stands for: Would you rather die?"

Intel Watch

Jonathan Weisman writes in The Washington Post: "A long-awaited Senate analysis comparing the Bush administration's public statements about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein with the evidence senior officials reviewed in private remains mired in partisan recrimination and will not be released before the November elections, key senators said yesterday."

Couric Watch

Newly minted CBS News anchor Katie Couric had an interview with Bush yesterday. (I believe ABC's Charlie Gibson is on for today.)

Here's the text of much of the interview; here's video of part one and part two . A pretty newsless time was had by all.

Here's one notable excerpt :

Bush: "One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."

Couric nods sympathetically.

Bush: "I believe it. As I told you, Osama bin Laden believes it."

Another exchange:

Couric: "Does it concern you, as we walk this corridor and see portraits of people like President Reagan, for whom your dad worked as vice president, some of -- your father's close colleagues have criticized the war in Iraq or efforts, particularly Brent Scowcroft, his former national security advisor, very publicly saying in 2004: 'Iraq is a failing venture,'?"

Bush: "Yeah. Does it bother me? Nah, not really. When you do hard things, people are gonna criticize you. The American people expect me to make decisions based upon principle, to deal with the threats that face our nation -- not to worry about criticism. Of course I listen to it. That's part of the job."

Here's a doting photo essay showing Couric in the White House driveway, waving to the White House press corps, being briefed by Dan Bartlett prior to the interview, then on her jet back to New York, then on her helicopter back to the studio.

An Apology?

In his Washington Post opinion column this morning, David S. Broder writes off the whole Valerie Plame story as a "tempest in a teapot" and says that journalists who maligned Karl Rove by suggesting that he was the "chief culprit in this supposed plot to suppress the opposition" owe the man an apology.

Broder scolds Sidney Blumenthal of Salon and Joe Conason of the American Prospect by name -- and an unnamed writer for Newsweek who turns out to be none other than Howard Fineman .

Writes Broder: "Newsweek, in a July 25, 2005, cover story on Rove, after dutifully noting that Rove's lawyer said the prosecutor had told him that Rove was not a target of the investigation, added: 'But this isn't just about the Facts, it's about what Rove's foes regard as a higher Truth: That he is a one-man epicenter of a narrative of Evil.'"

And for that, Newsweek "and other publications owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts."

Motivational Device

Dan Gilgoff and Kenneth T. Walsh write in U.S. News: "With President Bush's sagging poll numbers and the possibility that Democrats might take back the House in November, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten has developed a special motivational technique to keep West Wing staffers focused on getting things done in the next 2 1/2 years. Bolten has distributed to key aides a 'countdown clock'-a cellphone-size timepiece that gives a digital readout of the time remaining in the Bush presidency. When he showed it to U.S. News Chief White House Correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh last week, the clock showed 873 days, 21 hours, 21 minutes, and 17 seconds until the next president is sworn on Jan. 20, 2009."

I want one, too. How can I get one?

Not the Exorcist

Glenn Thrush writes for Newsday: "Karl Rove says he's not The Exorcist.

"Rove, the Bush political shaman Democrats love to demonize, enlisted a trio of clergymen to exorcize Hillary Rodham Clinton's left-wing spirit when he moved into her West Wing office in 2001, according to an unflattering new biography.

"'I talked to Karl; he said it's not true and, beyond that, he will have no comment,' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said."