Those 28 Pages
The Bush administration is resisting calls to declassify the remaining 28 pages of a 900-page report looking into the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks - 28 pages that deal with alleged links between members of the Saudi government and the hijackers. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal is pushing for more declassification because. the Saudi government says, keeping secret parts of the report dealing with Saudi Arabia appears to suggest that the kingdom has something to hide.

Well, yeah.

Some suggest the Bush administration is keeping the pages secret because it wants to protect the Saudi ruling family. But perhaps there's another explanation. Perhaps we're watching a bit of Bush strategery unfold. Perhaps Bush is doing a reverse rope-a-dope on the Saudis.

What if the administration classified the 28 pages on Saudi involvement in order to bait the Saudi ruling family into issuing all sorts of general denials and huffing and puffing as if they've been insulted somehow - as, indeed, the Saudi government is now doing. What if, after a few days of such denials, Bush were to order most of the remaining 28 pages of the report to be immediately declassified and made public, laying out in breathtaking detail the Saudis' involvement in 9/11?

Remember the Bush Doctrine and the goal: ending terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them. I think Bush meant it, and won't be deterred. I think everything he does related to foreign policy and the war on terror is focused on that goal, and driven by that doctrine.

Consider what has happened. The administration classifies a section of the report, which immediately draws the attention of the world press, and that gets the Saudis - accused by the implication of those 28 redacted pages - to profess their innocence loudly and publicly. Now if the administration declassifies the 28 pages it will drop the evidence into public view at a moment of maximum press and public attention - more attention than if the 28 pages had not been classified in the first place - and the pressure on the Saudis to admit their guilt, and take crucial and real steps to reform, and to crack down on the extremists and shut down the terror-supporting organizations and close the schools of Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalism would be immense.

And, as we've seen with Prince Ibn Al-Walid trying to give New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani $10 million for New York shortly after 9/11, the Saudis try to assuage their guilt by writing big checks. Perhaps they may soon be asked to underwrite the costs of the war on terror... an offer that, once the 28 pages are made public, they may find impossible to refuse.

UPDATE: The Comedian has another take on it. I'm convinced that the redacted section of the 9/11 report about the Saudis was redacted so that President Bush could sandbag the press into demanding its release. Why? Because I suspect ... you'll have to go Read the Whole Thing to find out why.