A week doesn’t go by without someone telling me that Saddam had no real power and posed no real threat. Of course, people who read only the NYT are more likely to believe that, but selective amnesia also helps (any talk of Saddam’s crimes is dismissed as “happening before the Gulf War”). It might help if the NYT would disseminate information already available, such as was presented at the Intelligence Summit, since Saddam Had WMD, a fact that even nineteen year-olds have noticed but appears to escape the mind of the Grey Lady. But it would also make a difference if the intelligence agencies would release some more information. As the WSJ editorial this morning explains,
But consider just one hypothetical: Is it in the “national interest” to reveal documents if they show that Jacques Chirac played a more substantial role in encouraging Saddam’s intransigence than is already known? No doubt some Foggy Bottom types would say no. But we’d strongly disagree. The “national interest” exception is so broad and vague that it would end up being used to justify keeping secret the merely embarrassing.
Not doing so begs the question, in the WSJ’s words, “Why should so much of that truth now be deemed so sensitive? “
As I said the other day, Ralph Peters is in Iraq. Today (article via Maria) he writes about the power grid and things are going far better than you’ve been told.
While on the subject of Iraq, if you’re in Manhattan this weekend, go see some Iraqi art at Pomegranate Gallery in SoHo 133 Greene Street, between Prince and Houston Streets
Update Also from Maria, Larry Elders interviews General Georges Sada, who served as the second-highest ranked general in the Iraqi Air Force
