1 Boring Old Man

COMMENTARY
Saddam’s WMD
By PETER HOEKSTRA and RICK SANTORUM
June 26, 2006

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The president is the ultimate classifier and declassifier of information, but the entire matter has now been so politicized that, in practice, he is often paralyzed. If he were to order the declassification of a document pointing to the existence of WMDs in Iraq, he would be instantly accused of "cherry picking" and "politicizing intelligence." He may therefore not be inclined to act.

In practice, then, the intelligence community decides what the American public and its elected officials can know and when they will learn it. Sometimes those decisions are made by top officials, while on other occasions they are made by unnamed bureaucrats with friends in the media. People who leak the existence of sensitive intelligence programs like the terrorist surveillance program or financial tracking programs to either damage the administration or help al Qaeda, or perhaps both, are using the release or withholding of documents to advance their political desires, even as they accuse others of manipulating intelligence.

We believe that the decisions of when and what Americans can know about issues of national security should not be made by unelected, unnamed and unaccountable people.

Some officials in the intelligence community withheld the document we requested on WMDs, and somebody is resisting our request to declassify the entire document while briefing journalists in a tendentious manner. We will continue to ask for declassification of this document and the hundreds of thousands of other Saddam-produced documents, and we will also insist on periodic updates on discoveries in Iraq.

This is no small matter. It is not — as a few self-proclaimed experts have declared — a spat over ancient history. It involves life and death for American soldiers on the battlefield, and it involves the ability of the American people to evaluate the actions of their government, and thus to render an objective judgment. The people must have the whole picture, not just a shard of reality dished up by politicized intelligence officers.

Information is a potent weapon in the current war. Al Qaeda uses the Internet very effectively and uses the media as a terrorist tool. If the American public can be deceived by people who withhold basic information, we risk losing the war at home, even if we win it on the battlefield. The debate should focus on the basic question — what, exactly, we need to do to succeed both here and in Iraq. We are dismayed to have learned how many people in our own government are trying to distort that debate.

I subscribe to several newsletters from "the other side" just to see what they’re talking about. One sends out some article every couple of days that is still preaching the Judith Miller, Laurie Mylroie, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield. Rice, AEI, PNAC line that Saddam was a real threat, that he really had Weapons of Mass Destruction, they’re buried in the sand, hidden in Syria, etc.

Desparate Rick Santorum, a guy none of us are going to miss, has jumped on this bandwagon. It’s laughable, except it isn’t. The essence of the Rovian technique is to say ridiculous things that are aimed at a particular audience over and over no matter how absurd, because there’s a segment of their constituency that only reads the Conservative Media, watches only Fox News, and listens to Rush Limbaugh every day. If you say the same tired stuff over and over, somebody will buy it. This tactic smells like Lucky Karl is at it again…