Submitted April 22, 2003 (not published)

As the search for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction continues, another breakthrough surfaced last week, when the New York TImes reported that an American military team "found" an Iraqi chemical weapons scientist who provided them with the following information: that many of the banned weapons had been destroyed only days before the war began, that other stockpiles of banned materials had been destroyed by Hussein during the mid-1990's, that more recently Iraq had indeed been cooperating with Al Quaeda, and that the Iraqi dictator had also secretly transferred both weapons and technology to Syria.

Claiming fear of reprisals, the military team refused to identify the scientist. They were more than willing, however, to assess that he was "credible", because he'd led them to several secret sites where they'd unearthed an anonymous substance that they characterized as a precursor to a toxic agent. They declined any more specifics, again sighting fear of reprisals.

One would think that the remnants of Saddam's regime might be a tad too busy trying to discreetly melt away to be attempting reprisals at the moment, and that the importance to Washington of being able to brandish the long-awaited smoking gun at the international community's myriad skeptics and naysayers would mandate fuller disclosure of such significant findings. After all, if his reported account is to be believed, this lone informant has provided all the major missing pieces of the WMD puzzle, while also corroborating the administration's prewar claims of an Al Quaeda connection, and its postwar accusations against Syria.

Instead , we are offered the same tea leaves and entrails that have become the staple of an intelligence community whose influence over policy seems to grow, as if by magic, in inverse proportion to its shrinking credibility with the outside world.

Could there be some more compelling reason for secrecy in this instance? Perhaps the Iraqi scientist, native of the land of the look-alike, bears an unfortunate resemblance to Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle? Or could it all be true, marking the first time since the Warren Commission report that a single bullet has managed to hit so many key targets?

Either way, about the only thing as unclear as the validity of these recurring claims is what usefulness those proffering them believe that they serve. The attentive and the cynical won't be swayed by them, and the apathetic and exhausted have long since surrendered. That leaves only the some of the people you can fool all of the time, who don't require them.

Nonetheless, I'm beginning to suspect it's this last group that is the Pentagon's target audience, if not the entire administration's. And why not? A generation's worth of dumbing down has undoubtedly swelled the ranks of the easily misled. That the Republicans are the first to recognize this trend and develop a political strategy to capitalize on it is to their credit. It also goes a long way toward explaining the administration's habit, from terror alerts to budget projections to phony job creation and pollution reduction initiatives, to the mantra of weapons of mass destruction, of spinning unverifiable assertions and unsupportive facts into fairy tales faster than you can say Rumsfeldstiltskin.

Then again, it could all be much simpler. When a government decides to double its budget for intelligence after years of underfunding education, the people are bound to wind up with neither.

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