Drats! We can’t see the smoking gun evidence!
From the LAT …
The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.
U.S. officials promised last week to provide evidence of Iranian activities that led President Bush to announce Jan. 10 that U.S. forces would begin taking the offensive against Iranian agents who threatened Americans.
But some officials in Washington are concerned that some of the material may be inconclusive and that other data cannot be released without jeopardizing intelligence sources and methods. They want to avoid repeating the embarrassment that followed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, when it became clear that information the administration cited to justify the war was incorrect, said the officials, who described the internal discussions on condition of anonymity.
“We don’t want a repeat of the situation we had when [then-Secretary of State] Colin L. Powell went before the United Nations,” said one U.S. official, referring to Powell’s 2003 presentation on then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s unconventional weapons program that relied on evidence later found to be false. “People are going to be skeptical.”
Concern that the evidence may be bogus would seem like a decent reason not to release it.
