Iraq: one more time.(on the right)

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 11

Not enough attention has been paid, on the Iraq question, to the factor of universal access to information. For many years, in many wars, news reporters could not get near the front-line scene. And where high politics were concerned and dictators held sway, newsmen--and foreign diplomats--not only were stymied, they were deliberately misled.

Restraints on visiting newsmen nowadays are mostly composed with a view to security--not of the United States or of Iraq, but of the newsmen. It is undoubtedly true that a reporter can't with total confidence walk down the main street of Baghdad. But it is almost certainly true that, were he to do so, he would not come upon any evidence of U.S. or Iraqi deception. Of U.S.-Iraqi ignorance--yes. If we knew the location of every al-Qaeda enclave, we have ten times the firepower and the technology to uproot it.

Now this is a factor of critical importance in the days ahead, when the future of Iraq will be decided. We have in Washington an extraordinary political situation. The formal authority is in the hands of the executive branch, which is conducting the war, and the legislative branch. The jurisdictions are not always clear. Yes, the executive could simply call off the war--nobody would need to be importuned for permission to reach such a decision. And of course, Congress could appropriate the whole gold reserve and designate it for use in the war. But actually to do so would require the cooperation of the executive. That's where authority over the generals and the corporals and the bazookas resides.

The widening division hasn't anything to do with data officially withheld. It has entirely to do with analyses and extrapolations. The individual senators and congressmen who will be voting on the critical questions in the days ahead aren't in any relevant sense better informed or worse informed than the White House.

Our gifted ambassador, Ryan Crocker, summarized it this way in his testimony to Congress: If we stay on, ...