Here are a few things I am sure Bush won’t mention during his speech tonight.

Worried CIA Officers Buy Legal Insurance

CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing, according to current and former intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the program.

The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They worry that they will not have Justice Department representation in court or congressional inquiries, the officials said.

Rice stands by claims of Al-Qaeda-Saddam links

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted that Al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq were developing weapons of mass destruction prior to the ousting of Saddam Hussein.

Rice, giving a series of interviews ahead of the fifth anniversary of the September 11 Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, brushed aside a recently released US intelligence report saying there was no evidence Saddam’s regime was helping Al-Qaeda obtain such arms.

“There were ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda,” she said on Fox News Sunday.

Bin Laden Trail ‘Stone Cold’

The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years. Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world — no tips from informants, no snippets from electronic intercepts, no points on any satellite image — has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.

“The handful of assets we have have given us nothing close to real-time intelligence” that could have led to his capture, said one counterterrorism official, who said the trail, despite the most extensive manhunt in U.S. history, has gone “stone cold.”

Merkel criticizes U.S. over CIA prisons

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has sought to bolster ties with the United States since she took office, rebuked Washington on Saturday for sanctioning secret CIA prisons used to interrogate terror suspects.

“The use of such prisons is not compatible with my understanding of the rule of law,” Merkel said in Berlin

Instead we will get the usual rosy picture painted for us of how everything is going great and we are doing a “heckuva job”. On the anniversary of September 11, shouldn’t Americans be entitled to hearing the truth from their President and not a bunch of political spin?

(Cross posted at Crooks and Liars)