Obviously, the president is stonewalling

With Roy's absence, the Vega continues to wade into the miasma and report on the various vapers and gaseous mixtures.

Why Is the Intelligence Community Stonewalling on Saddam's WMD [Andy McCarthy]

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?

Posted at 5:10 PM

Um, let me try to help: Because the "IC's" pre-war info was, pretty much, that Hussein had left over chemical weapons from the Iraq-Iran War. The finding of a bunch of rusty old cannisters didn't "clarify" anything. It underscored the weak intelligence we had going in.

Oh, and as for the "Bush lied and people died" thing, it remains very much built around a work of non-fiction.

Believe me, if the finding had meant anything even remotely significant and affirming for the Cheney administration, they certainly would have rather gone to the press with that rather than the latest indictment of scary terrorists.