...A less benign explanation for the Bush Administration's lethargy is that its officials don't want to challenge the prewar CIA orthodoxy that the "secular" Saddam would never cavort with "religious" al Qaeda. They've seen what happened to others--"Scooter" Libby, Douglas Feith, John Bolton--who dared to question CIA analyses. Mr. Hayes reports that the Pentagon intelligence chief, Stephen Cambone, has been a particular obstacle to energetic document inspection.

But if we've learned nothing else about U.S. intelligence in the last four years, it is that its "consensus" views are often wrong. The 9/11 Commission has confirmed extensive communication between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda over the years, including sanctuary for the current insurgent leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. We have also learned that in the years leading up to his ouster Saddam had implemented a "faith campaign" to use fundamentalist Islam as a tool of internal control. Especially if U.S. troops are going to remain to help the new Iraq government defeat the terrorists, we should want to know everything we can about them.

And the American people should know too. For three years now, opponents of the war in Congress and the bureaucracy have cherry-picked intelligence details and leaked them to influence public opinion. The Bush Administration until recently has been remarkably reluctant to fight back. Telling truths about Saddam that are revealed by his own documents is part of that fight.