Speculation is running wild. President Bush is giving a news conference at 12:45pm CDT. An announcement has already been made that some al-qaida prisoners are being transferred into Pentagon custody and afforded POW status (ie. Geneva Convention protection).

I certainly hope that’s not the “big” news. If it is, count me among the hugely disappointed.

Update: Mario Loyola saw something different in today’s announcement… (hat tip: Michelle)

The President just pulled one of the best maneuvers of his entire presidency. By transferring most major Al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo, and simultaneously sending Congress a bill to rescue the Military Commissions from the Supreme Court’s ruling Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the President spectacularly ambushed the Democrats on terrain they fondly thought their own. Now Democrats who oppose (and who have vociferously opposed) the Military Commissions will in effect be opposing the prosecution of the terrorists who planned and launched the attacks of September 11 for war crimes.

And if that were not enough, the President also frontally attacked the Hamdan ruling’s potentially chilling effect on CIA extraordinary interrogation techniques, by arguing that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions is too vague, and asking Congress to define clearly the criminal law limiting the scope of permissible interrogation.

Taken as a whole, the President’s maneuver today turned the political tables completely around. He stole the terms of debate from the Democrats, and rewrote them, all in a single speech. It will be delightful to watch in coming days and hours as bewildered Democrats try to understand what just hit them, and then sort through the rubble of their anti-Bush national security strategy to see what, if anything, remains.

Though the flaw in Loyola’s reasoning assumes that the Democrats actually had a strategy other than just hating Bush.

1. […] Update: Someone reminded me of the hype surrounding a supposed “big announcement” by President Bush on Sept. 6 which turned out not to live up to the hype. Maybe this was supposed to be the big announcement, but something happened. 4 Comments » […]

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