Bush's Dirty Secret

Well, Bush finally came clean on the torture camps.

Today's Guardian leader nails it:

Not many people will have been taken aback by George Bush's admission that the CIA has been secretly holding suspected terrorists at "black sites" across the world. Nor will many feel that it represents a fundamental change of heart about the morality, legality and political wisdom of aspects of the US "war on terror."

The methods used in these facilities, were "tough but lawful", the president asserted, even as the Pentagon was announcing that methods such as hooding, electric shocks and "waterboarding" - torture by any definition - are to be outlawed in future. And these prisons, reported to be in Romania and Poland as well as Arab allies such as Morocco and Egypt, have not been closed. It would now be useful to know, as Euro MPs insisted yesterday, just who has been telling lies about this and the related issue of extraordinary renditions.

The Guardian goes on, rightly, to point out that this about-face would never have happened without the efforts of:

those who have campaigned on this for so long: human rights activists, lawyers - and journalists whose tenacity helped ensure that this murky, important but unfinished story did not just fade away.

And that includes all you progressive bloggers (and conservatives with a conscience). Kudos.

Keep it up, though, Bush wants to legalize the torture that has prior to now been carried out in secret and illegaly.