The Wall Street Journal offers a particularly strong editorial this morning on Iraq's support for terrorism and links to al Qaeda.
The key conclusion, in my view, is this one: "The main Iraq intelligence failure was over WMD, but the report indicates that the CIA also underestimated Saddam's ties to global terror cartels." [Emphasis in the original.]
The editorial lashes the press corps, John McCain and the Bush Administration for the failure to let the public know about the study and its importance. The entire thing is worth reading -- here -- but I found the editorial's criticism of the Bush Administration particularly compelling.
A new Pentagon report suggests that Iraq's links to world-wide terror networks, including al Qaeda, were far more extensive than previously understood.
Naturally, it's getting little or no attention. Press accounts have been misleading or outright distortions, while the Bush Administration seems indifferent. Even John McCain has let the study's revelations float by. But that doesn't make the facts any less notable or true.
The editorial concludes:
All of these are inconvenient facts for those who want to assert that somehow Saddam could have been easily contained and presented no threat to the U.S. The Harmony files buttress the case that the decision to oust Saddam was the right one -- which makes it all the more puzzling that the Bush Administration is mum. It isn't the first time the White House has ceded the Iraq debate to its opponents.
We are, after all, in the middle of a global war on terror. The great debate over past six years has been about whether Iraq is a central front in that war or a distraction from it. You'd think a study on "Iraq and Terrorism" might be relevant, especially to an dministration that has struggled miserably to communicate on the war. Here is their case, and they're choosing to ignore it.
