NP: Shuffle: The Lounge Lizards

There's a lot of talk today about a piece in the Washington Post that indicates Khalid Sheikh Mohammed might get tried in military courts after all.

Except, of course, that it doesn't. What the article says is that some of President Obama's advisers are set to make a recommendation that the plan for a civilian trial be scrapped. One would assume Attorney General Eric Holder disagrees, and still has the President's ear on this, and the article does not say that Obama has made any kind of decision.

The left is predictably up in arms over this, which makes me wonder what happens if Obama rejects this recommendation and stands by Holder. The article cleverly puts the words "likely" and "Obama accepts the recommendation" in the same sentence, but does it in Cheney-esque fashion, giving the illusion that Obama is likely to accept, rather than that his advisers are likely to make the recommendation.

On the other hand, this is coming from more than one source, and part of the story is that the switch may be necessary to get Congress to agree to shut down Guantanamo Bay. So, I'm not sure if this might actually happen. Of course, neither are Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Finn, who wrote the piece, but that's not going to stop the blogs and the news networks from talking about this like it was an announcement that the decision has been made, which is why it makes me mad.