Secrets and lies

As the White House fights to keep a WMD report hidden, a new poll shows that 41 percent of the public still believes Saddam had a hand in 9/11.

Published June 25, 2007 4:24PM (EDT)

The Washington Examiner says Senate Democrats and Republicans want the full Senate report on Iraq's nonexistent WMD declassified.

Can you guess who's opposing the move?

OK, we'll help. The Examiner's Rowan Scarborough, citing the word of an unidentified Senate Republican, says the White House fears that the declassification of the report would "trigger another round of negative news media coverage and Democratic-led congressional hearings."

We're not sure that negative news coverage and the possibility of hearings are what we'd call a legitimate basis for the classification of a Senate report.

We're also not so sure whether it really matters. In the major national public opinion polls taken so far this month, an average of about 30 percent of the Americans surveyed say they approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president. We're just guessing here, but it's probably safe to assume that those 30 percenters are a subset of the 41 percent who still believe that Saddam Hussein's regime was "directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001."


By Tim Grieve

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog.

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