“President Obama will attempt today to answer critics of his dismantling of Bush-era policies on detention and interrogation,” says Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post in a piece that sets today’s expected speech in the context of a meeting at The White House in which the president discussed the potentially explosive issue of closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Obama yesterday invited to the White House leaders of about a dozen human and civil rights organizations as well as law professors. Administration participants in the 90-minute session included Holder, White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Several participants discussed the meeting on the condition of anonymity. One said Obama argued that there was no trade-off between American values and national security, but that GOP demagoguery in Congress was dominating the issue. Another said Obama seemed irritated that some of those who attended the meeting had recently compared his policies to those of Bush.

Of course Republicans are demagoguing this issue for all they’re worth, led by Richard Cheney, the ghost of administrations past. And the democrats are running for cover as fast as their little legs can carry them.

It’s not clear to me why the Guantanamo detainees are so much more dangerous than ordinary American criminals that they can’t be housed in ordinary American prisons. But the potential presence of these allegedly dangerous individuals within the borders of the United States is being hyped with all the usual scare talk designed to spread fear of aliens running amuck in the country, blowing up our houses and raping our daughters.

And now we’re given a newly released report, previously held back by fears at the Pentqagon that it’s release “could further inflame the debate over closing the facility [at Guantanamo] and upset the White House.” This report alleges that “27 Guantanamo detainees released to other countries since 2002 had been confirmed as subsequently engaging in terrorist activities and another 47 are strongly suspected of doing so.”

I strongly suspect that this report was leaked for political effect and that like other Pentagon claims designed to alarm the electorate it won’t stand serious scrutiny. Still in the theater of Guantanamo hype, one has only to shout “fire!”