The very best part of President Bush's speech today, about all the new systems in place for trying terrorists, was that virtually nothing he outlined was new. Instead, the president's offerings are a mix of old programs to which he's never admitted (including the CIA's secret detention and interrogation program); old programs that suddenly have new urgency (including his military commissions); and nods to the pre-existing legal systems that his lawyers rejected when they devised all these new programs in the first place (including the Geneva Conventions and laws prohibiting torture).
The laundry list of programs and powers Bush outlined today represent a big fat legal do-over. This was precisely the speech he should have given five years ago. Now the president is suddenly willing to defer to Congress on the matter of military tribunals; he's newly willing to abide by the Geneva Conventions with respect to the treatment of detainees; he's ready to concede that the architects of the 9/11 attacks should face trial rather than be consigned to some legal Phantom Zone; and he acknowledges that he is bound by the December 2005 Detainee Treatment Act—even though his signing statement at the time implied that he was not. He claims, yet again, that the hundreds of Guantanamo detainees are dangerous "terrorists" even as Gitmo authorities acknowledge how few of them really are.
Details here from Dahlia Lithwick at Slate. (via Bashman) (cartoon image by Jeff Stahler at the Cincinnati Post)