PRISONERS.(The Talk of the Town)

If only political jujitsu were a useful weapon in the war on terror, the President's speech last Wednesday, in the East Room of the White House, would have struck a powerful blow on behalf of what he called "the cause of humanity, against those who seek to impose the darkness of tyranny and terror upon the entire world." In just thirty-seven minutes, he changed the subject from Iraq to terrorism, flummoxing a newly confident opposition; he basked in the applause of an audience that included September 11th families as he vowed to put Al Qaeda leaders on trial at Guantanamo, where, he announced, they had just been moved from the C.I.A.'s secret overseas prisons; he reassured the world that the United States doesn't torture prisoners in these "black sites," while essentially reserving the right to continue to do so. He simultaneously played the good cop and the bad cop, the principled advocate of the Geneva conventions and the hardboiled defender of "an alternative set of procedures" (which went unspecified). And he forced the Democrats into an agonizingly familiar position: the pre-election defensive crouch. A bill that the White House sent to Congress last week presented members with the choice of voting for the President's military tribunals, which would allow the use of evidence gained by coercion and deprive defendants of the right to hear all the evidence against them, or trying to rebut election-eve commercials that accuse them of wanting to see the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed go unpunished.

It was the kind of performance--part inspirational, part fear-purveying, part bullying--that used to be this President's signature. Its deftness and its timing were reminiscent of his successful effort in the weeks before the last midterm elections, in 2002, to force his opponents into rushed and politically difficult votes on the Homeland Security bill and the Iraq-war resolution. In Washington last week, the political class shook its head in admiration--you can't count him out yet! Within hours of the speech, the Republican leadership in Congress, which had been making unhappy noises at the smell of its own potential demise, reverted to its cooperative role and promised to bring the White House bill up for a vote in a matter of weeks, or even days. Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, whose alternative proposal would ban the tribunals from admitting coerced or secret evidence, will either stand up to their party leaders or find a way to declare technical victory while caving in. After five years, justice for Al Qaeda is suddenly so urgent that it has to be guaranteed before, say, November 7th. The Democrats hit back, but you could hear the quaver--not again!

Whether or not the public mood shifts to the President in time for the midterms, the recovery of his political skills will be of no help in the long struggle against radical Islam. In fact, it will be harmful. Everything about the speech that sparkled with tactical cleverness in terms of domestic politics contributed to an ongoing strategic disaster around the world. "The United States does not torture," the President said. "I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it." This was a lie, and most of the world knows it. The lie, and the reality that the phrase "an alternative set of procedures" is meant to conceal--simulated drowning, sleep and sensory deprivation, induced hypothermia, beatings, and other forms of torture that are responsible for some of the dozens of detainee deaths considered to be homicides--have done more to embolden America's enemies and estrange its friends than anything Osama bin Laden might say or do.

The speech was full of distortions: for example, the President's statement that the prisoners at Guantanamo are hard-core terrorists and that "we have in place a rigorous process to insure those held at Guantanamo Bay belong at Guantanamo" (innocent men have languished there for years); and his implication that the C.I.A.'s harsh interrogation methods led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh ...