I just read and re-read that post, MM, and it could be correct.
It would make sense to keep the WMD finding quiet for security reasons.
What I don't understand is the reluctance to talk about the Iraq/AQ connection. It was the second big reason for the war in Iraq.
Most of the evidence, besides the press release Saddam issued after 9-11 offering asylum to Osama (pause to reflect on that - reported by CNN and just as quickly forgotten by them as inconvenient), was either filtered through the Clinton-era CIA apparatchiks which were clearly incompetent and hostile to the administration (bunch of CYA going on in October of 2001), or were since found on the ground in Iraq.
That last part is crucial. Remember, for months the Saddamites were staging as much or more often than the terrorists. We had a Werewulf situation akin to what happened in the Occupation of Germany in 1945-46. (Werewulf units were Nazi troops mainly in Bavaria that were the final gasp of the Third Reich. The resistance/attacks lasted a long time).
There were a significant number of highly placed fascists (Baathists) with high clearances that were for months, at-large. There were a large number of risks involved in that phase - among them, the risk that if the Saddamites knew we had located certain caches, that they would accelerate their actions and precipitate a chemical attack out of panic. We could also use the caches to mousetrap them, which wouldn't work well if we blabbed about it. Until we rounded up the top echelon of these creatures, they still had a likelihood of knowing/accessing large caches of weapons & supplies, clearance and control of "resistance" cells, and the ability to grab cash and fund terrorist attacks to take the pressure off. We still haven't found all the money, by the way, but we did find hundreds of millions. (and gave it to the government of Iraq). Pretending cluelessness forces your enemy to underestimate you, to his death.
The documents and evidence found in Iraq wasn't fully dispersed or discussed until it had been analyzed. We're talking about details of who had influence, who was assigned certain areas of the country to attack/murder, as well as details of who approached the Taliban and what was done.Plus, we're talking the archives of an entire country. That's a lot to wade through and use.
The sensitive stuff was probably too buried or time-critical to use for political purposes. The historical record was clear on the connections - the democrats just tried to ignore it or to rewrite history completely.
Seems to me that there was always the attitude in the administration that "the truth will out".
And so, lately you've seen mass amounts of seized documents available for translation by the public. After all, we've caught or killed nearly every top criminal in Saddam's regime, and we've had time to transition out any human-intelligence sources that needed to be rescued.
In short, the proof was needed in the past for operational reasons - again, it looks like the administration kept quiet because the war was more important than politics.
I know you fault the White House PR, but they ARE fighting a war and when they say something and it is ignored, I don't know what they can do. PLUS, a lot of this has to do with security. For example, (speculating here) if the strategy was to make flypaper for Al Qaeda in Iraq, they wouldn't talk about AQ, instead letting the happy press fiction of an insurgency and civil war lull the terrorists into thinking they weren't known. Now a whole bunch of them have been killed, including Zarqawi, and the news is leaking out.
I don't know for sure, of course. I just think that the President isn't stupid, and when people have been lying he has a better reason to keep his mouth shut than ignorance of PR. (Although I will freely admit that I am relieved that Scott McClellan is gone and Tony Snow has taken over.)
Which reminds me about something else. We know that Tony knows what he is doing...so how come HE, when asked about this, demurred and said that they couldn't be sure of the information yet? Surely Tony knows the value of this information!