Bob Woodward has a balanced

Bob Woodward has a balanced article in tomorrow’s Washington Post about the Administration’s decision to begin releasing classified information on Iraq’s concealment of banned weapons of mass destruction. Woodward nicely articulates the competing considerations: desire to persuade doubting Americans and Europeans, ambiguity in much of the evidence, and fear of compromising intelligence sources that will be crucial if and when war begins. Today Tom Daschle–who has a remarkable record of being wrong about virtually every public issue at every point in his career–called on the Administration to disclose what it claims to know about Iraq’s violations. The problem with this, obviously, is that the Iraqis are not stupid, and disclosing what we know now–weeks or maybe months before we are in a position to do anything about it–will enable the Iraqis to figure out what our intelligence sources are, and hide their weapons more effectively over the coming weeks. This is really very obvious, so you can decide for yourself whether Daschle’s challenge is issued in good faith.

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