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Who'll Let the Docs Out?
Bush wants to release the Saddam files but his intelligence chief stalls.
by Stephen F. Hayes

"Yesterday, Mr. President, the war had its best night on the network news since the war ended," [Congressman Mike] Pence said.

"Is this the tapes thing?" Bush asked, referring to two ABC News reports that included excerpts of recordings Saddam Hussein made of meetings with his war cabinet in the years before the U.S. invasion. Bush had not seen the newscasts but had been briefed on them.

Pence framed his response as a question, quoting Abraham Lincoln: "One of your Republican predecessors said, 'Give the people the facts and the Republic will be saved.' There are 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes and millions of pages of other documents that we captured after the war. When will the American public get to see this information?"

Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.

Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren't released sooner. "If I knew then what I know now," Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, "I would have been more supportive of the war."

Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. "This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out." The president would reiterate this point before the meeting adjourned. And as the briefing ended, he approached Pence, poked a finger in the congressman's chest, and thanked him for raising the issue. When Pence began to restate his view that the documents should be released, Bush put his hand up, as if to say, "I hear you. It will be taken care of."

[Read the whole thing here. Hat tip" John Hinderaker, who comments here.]

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The President wants the documents released. As John says, if the people working for him can't follow orders they should be replaced. If there's a problem finding enough translators to deal with them all quickly, I suggest putting images of the original documents online where an "army of Davids" can get to work on them. I know my friend Haider can't be the only loyal American who grew up speaking Arabic.

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Curt at Flopping Aces writes:

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[...]

Read the complete article and you come away from it with no other conclusion that the documents are damning to the Russians.  Did they help Iraq get rid of the WMD’s?  If so why would we give a damn if we shoved their faces in it?

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Curt, I couldn't agree more.

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J. R. Dunn makes an excellent case for releasing the documents quickly here and has independently come up with an improved version of my suggestion to place images of the documents online for translation by Arabic speaking members of the public.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 10, 2006 at 11:38 PM | Permalink

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