Mark Kleiman has some thought-provoking comments on the subject, and I don’t think the topic is going away anytime soon:

Jane Galt objects to the release of the 28 censored pages about Saudi involvement in the 9-11 massacres on the grounds that, once we acknowledge publicly that the Saudi Royal Family was directly responsible for the murder of 3000 Americans, we will have no alternative but to go to war, conquer the Kingdom, and then face the rage of the “Arab street” at the spectacle of infidel boots marching through Mecca and Medina.

I don’t agree with her analysis, but she deserves credit for putting the real issue on the table; the Administration’s “protecting sources and methods” story just won’t wash.

Of course it won’t wash, but I am still shocked (though perhaps not surprised) over the lack of outrage at the Administration’s sloughing off the issue. Kleiman holds no punches and sees it, as do I, as ample grounds for rejecting Bush come November ’04:

Now an argument could be made — and it’s one I’m not professionally competent to judge — that the US national interest is best served by appeasing the Saudis rather than confronting them. That argument would be politically very unpopular if the report were released; that is why the Bush team is so intent on not releasing it.

But if this President is so incapable of leadership that his only means of restraining popular fury is to keep the public in the dark about who attacked us on 9-11, that’s the best argument I’ve heard yet for getting ourselves a new President.

Emphasis is mine.

Is anone getting this? Are we willingly going to allow the president to blindfold us?

It does seem, from these thousands of miles away, to be a politically extraordinary time in America. I’ve really never seen anything like it before.