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.
The editorial concludes:
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.
