Bush Missed a Guantanamo Trick

Without Karl Rove to whisper in his ear, the president seems to have missed an important chance to shoo John McCain into the White House. According to anti-death penalty and human rights campaigner Clive Stafford Smith, writing in The New York Post, had Bush chosen to put Khalid Sheik Muhammad, self-confessed kingpin of the September 11 attacks, before a military tribunal, the election would be playing against the background of a terrorist trial that would have driven voters into the hands of McCain. But it was not to be. Instead, “The Bush Administration marched to the beat of its own bizarre drummer, from one misjudgment to the next,” writes Smith.