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An interesting article appeared in the paper the other day. It concerned a report from the former American overseer of Iraq’s prisons. The official, Don Bordenkircher, claimed that during his time there several prisoners had “boasted of being involved in the transport of WMD warheads to Syria.”

What a bombshell, if the story is true. And yet it scarcely got mentioned in the mainstream media. Was this because the source was not credible, or because no one wanted it to be true?

Heaven forbid it is. It would mean a lot of mea culpas are in order, from journalists to politicians to academics to the man on the street. The Iraq debate, after all, has been settled. Conventional wisdom has it that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In fact, many people assume that the President knowingly lied about their existence in order to create a pretext for attacking Iraq.

Even the White House has given up the ghost. Not having found weapons of mass destruction following the initial invasion of Iraq, the Administration’s public relations machine thought it was better to change the subject from stockpiles to democratization. This, as it turns out, was a tactical mistake. Few want to waste American lives to bring democracy to a nation that did not ask for it, and may not even want it.

The point is that a lot of unanswered questions remain, and on a great many of these we have closed the books prematurely.

As in all complicated operas, it isn’t over until the fat lady sings. History will be the final judge of the unfolding drama of the Bush administration. As for the latest reportage surrounding Iraq’s vanishing WMD, it is merely a part of the unfolding plot.

Tom Neumann
Publisher