I can certainly understand the reluctance — if that’s what it is — of the intelligence community (IC) to go up in a balloon over the recent report that WMD have in fact been found in Iraq — something discussed here last week by Michael Ledeen, Kathryn, Tim Graham, Jim Robbins, Jonah and me. So far, what’s been found does not match up with the IC’s expectations prior to the war.
But there’s a difference between being overly exuberant about a significant development and failing to report it. And there’s a similarly big difference between failing to report it and stonewalling.
That’s what Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoekstra point out in their joint op-ed on OpinionJournal.com. Why in the world is this information being withheld from members of Congress and the public?
If there is some operational intelligence that we have good reasons to hold back on, fine. But the whole “Bush lied and people died” slander is built around what is apparently a fiction. Given all that has been said about the WMD investigation (including an elaborate investigation by a special panel, the Silberman-Robb Commission), what possible good reason is there not to clarify for the American people what we now know about Saddam’s weapons … and about how much investigation remains to be done?
