White House 'agrees torture ban'

In the 'Oh, I getcha' Department (See Cultural Reference for decryption):

The BBC resports that the White House has agrred to a ban on the torture or degrading of foreign terror suspects. The Bush Administration is under a lot of domestic pressure and this incident has but them between a rock and a hard place: Refuse and risk implicating itself in allegations of torture or comply and 'back down' from the argument, something this administration does not like to do.

But is this a tacit admission by the Bush Administration that they have lost control of the agenda? Only yesterday, George W. Bush got as close to saying sorry about the WMD intelligence as he ever has. I'm not getting too excited. He's a second term president with nowhere to go but out. Already this year he has lost the moment he had during his re-election, what with the climb-down over Social Security and the fallout from Hurricane Katrina. Libby, and possibly Rove, or on the legal hitlist over their involvement in the Plame Affair (no, I refuse to gate-erise).

However, on a more post-modern tack, what the Whitehouse agree to and what the Whitehouse do are two completely different things. This is a case of Strategic Communications, even Public Diplomacy: that's Public Relations "spin" to the un-initiated.

Only one thing will allows us to know for sure: transparency in government. Don't hold your breath.