Mystery of Woodward's Three Sources

Buried deep in an article by the Washington Post's media writer Howard Kurtz is new evidence that senior Bush administration officials knew their case for war with Iraq was shaky – and that the Post's star reporter Bob Woodward ducked his duty to the American people to present this information before the invasion began.

Not only did Woodward withhold evidence that pre-war WMD intelligence was suspect, he added his clout to a post-invasion public relations campaign aimed at heading off criminal indictments of White House officials who had retaliated against an Iraq War critic by leaking classified information that endangered a covert CIA officer and her contacts.

To make matters worse, both these abuses of information came not on some garden-variety political dirty trick but on life-and-death questions about the administration’s integrity in leading the nation to war.

While it may be true that few of Washington's elite know the mostly working-class men and women in the all-volunteer U.S. military, the moral weight of their sacrifices – and their deaths – should have some bearing on the consciences in the nation's capital. Career advancement and seven-figure book contracts might for once take a back seat.