Dan Froomkin for the WaPo, puts it all together in a comprehensive piece:

It’s true that it has been widely assumed and occasionally reported that the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation techniques could be traced back to the White House on a general level. But it was most definitely new last week when ABC News reported that a group of Bush’s top aides, including Vice President Cheney, took part in meetings where they explicitly discussed and approved — literally blow by blow — tactics such as waterboarding. And while Bush has previously defended these tactics — vaguely, and insisting against all evidence that they did not amount to torture — he had not, until now, acknowledged that he personally OK’d them beforehand.If you consider what the government did to be torture, which is a crime according to U.S. and international law, Bush’s statement shifts his role from being an accessory after the fact to being part of a conspiracy to commit.