More Secrets

N. Korea Issue Irks Congress (washingtonpost.com). The White House withheld North Korea's admission about a nuclear weapons program from key Democrats until after Congress had passed its resolution authorizing war with Iraq, prompting complaints on Capitol Hill that the administration has let politics influence its conduct of foreign affairs. [Daypop Top News Stories]

[...]  Democrats on Capitol Hill were critical yesterday of the 12-day gap between the admission by North Korea and the administration's disclosure. During that time, Congress passed the Iraq resolution, and President Bush signed it hours before the 7 p.m. disclosure about North Korea. Administration officials said they revealed the information because former Clinton administration officials had leaked the news after learning about it from State Department contacts. Democrats said the episode could further impair the administration's already fragile relations with Congress. [...]

I find it quite ironic that the Bush administration is so willing to try and invade the privacy of American citizens when they are so insistent on keeping as many secrets as possible themselves. Granted, those two philosophies - the government can keep secrets but the citizenry can't - that I shouldn't be surprised, but sometimes the depths to which this administration will go to hide information really does astound me.

I cannot imagie that the knowledge of North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program would not have had an impact on how members of Congress voted in regards to authorizing President Bush to be able to go to war with Iraq. Obviously, neither could the Bush administration, since they felt it was best to withhold this information from Congress and the public for 12 days after they first were made aware of it.

This, more than anything else I've seen, give lie to Bush's claims that he wants to go to war against Iraq because of concerns over weapons of mass destruction.  There is no unquestionable evidence I am aware of that would prove Iraq has such weapons.  North Korea, on the other hand, has admitted that they are working on it, and it's just possible they have working weapons already.  Are we preparing to go to war with them?  No.  Even though they were a part of Bush's Axis of Evil, and even though we have their own admission that they are working on weapons of mass distruction, we are not threatening them with military repercussions if they do not stop.  We aren't working to get a global coalition against them if they do not stop.  We are not demanding any kind of UN inspections or anything else.

In fact, it appears that the only thing we've done with the information is prevent anyone from hearing about it for 12 days, so Bush could get his war authorization for Iraq.  Even then, it was only revealed because they were afraid someone else would reveal it first.

Bush has shown this penchent for secrecy on many occasions.  He has changed the rules on the release of Presidential papers to that the public - which has a right to this material - is kept from it for an even longer period of time. He has decided to store his own gubernatorial papers at his father's Presidential library, where it can be much harder to gain access to them, rather than give them to one of the state libraries as his predecessors have done. He has supported Dick Cheney in his quest to keep anyone from knowing who he met with to help determine what the energy policy of the country should be (and who was influcing that decision). He has tried to prevent investigations into the 9/11 tragedies.  Time and time again, he has shown that given a choice, he believes the public doesn't have a right to know anything.  And now he's hiding things from Congress as well, so that they won't interfere with is plans.

I hope that Congress will realize that this is not a man who can be trusted with disclosing the whole truth, and that they should be wary if he's pushing hard for something and they're not entirely clear on why. I also hope that America in general will recognize that someone this obsessed with secrecy is not the kind of leader a nation built on the idea of "by the people and for the people" needs.