Bush faces Republican revolt over terror trials

· Worries over treatment of Guantánamo detainees
· Defendants to be barred from seeing evidence

President George Bush yesterday faced growing opposition from his fellow Republicans to a pillar of his war on terror: his plans to prosecute detainees at Guantánamo at military commissions.

Mr Bush had hoped to use the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Monday to shift the focus of November's congressional elections away from the war on Iraq to national security. But the strategy misfired with key Republicans balking at a White House proposal for legislation on military tribunals that would deny Guantánamo detainees the right to see classified evidence against them.

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Was Bush's 9/11 Terrorist Transfer a Political Stunt?

This is a partial transcript of "The Big Story With John Gibson," September 7, 2006, that has been edited for clarity.

JOHN GIBSON, HOST: After President Bush's big announcement yesterday that he moved top Al Qaeda suspects to Guantanamo, some Democrats are saying that the timing is politically motivated and meant to scare people before the midterm elections. They're even going so far as to say this move bears the fingerprints of longtime Bush political aide Karl Rove.

Now, someone who's written extensively about Rove's long-term influence on the president, Wayne Slater. He is the Austin bureau chief for The Dallas Morning News and author of the book "The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power."

So, Wayne, Karl Rove — everybody knows he's a political genius, but have you see his fingerprints, as it were, or his influence on what we've seen over the last couple of days?

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