When it was first announced that the Administration had ended its inexplicable opposition to the release of the Saddam documents, I believed that they would be of more value to historians than contemporary chroniclers of the Iraq War. That’s because even if the nearly 2 million documents and hundreds of hours of tapes confirmed everything the President had said about Saddam prior to the war, it would be too little and too late to counter the numerous myths, falsehoods, and outright lies spread by George Bush’s political foes.

Judging by what has been discovered already, I may have to alter that belief.

Simply put, there is political dynamite contained in these documents. The Iraqi government made no effort to obfuscate or hide their intentions, their connections to al Qaeda, their obsession with WMD, nor their desire to attack America using terrorists trained in Iraq as well as their own intelligence operatives. Saddam was a threat to the peace and security of the United States. And he stands convicted out of his own mouth.

Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard has been in the forefront of the effort to get these documents released:

Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is about to get more interesting.

Indeed. In Hayes’ article on Saddam’s connections with the Philippine offshoot of al Qaeda (started by Osama Bin Laden’s brother in law) we discover that the Iraqis were one of the terrorist group’s sponsors. And while there is no evidence of “operational cooperation” there is plenty of evidence that Saddam was funding a group that targeted Americans for death in the Philippines.

Other documents reveal an Iraqi state immersed in plans for sabotage, assassination, and terror. Several different departments of the Iranian intelligence agency Mukhabarat were concerned with exporting violence outside of Iraq and maintaining ties with terrorist organizations.

And this is from just a few dozen documents. Ray Robison, a former member of the Iraq Survey Group, has some fascinating analysis of other documents including some shocking information about Iraqi anthrax stocks and some tantalizing hints about Saddam’s nuclear program. (Keep scrolling and follow the links).

Will this evidence that retroactively justifies the American toppling of Saddam Hussein matter to the American people in the long run?

Much depends on whether or not Republicans wish to make debunking Democratic myths about the Iraq War a campaign issue. If they do, the press would be forced to cover the unearthing of the documents if only to explain to the American people what all the fuss is about. They may put their own spin on what the documents say (even though many that have been released so far have been very straightforward and unambiguous in laying out Saddam’s connection to terrorists). But just getting the document’s existence before the public will raise questions about the “Bush lied, people died” theme that has been a large part of the myth making Democrats have deliberately used to undermine support for the war.

At bottom, the documents could alter a political dynamic that has been trending against Republicans even before the 2004 Presidential election. There has been great unease in America, a nagging feeling that even if the President didn’t lie about Iraq, the threat from Saddam may have been exaggerated. And the Administration’s efforts to connect the Iraq War to the general War on Terror has suffered as a result. If there is one question these documents may finally answer it is that going after Saddam was indeed the next logical step in fighting and winning the larger conflict with al Qaeda and radical Islam.

If the documents accomplish this, it will not be because of anything the Bush Administration has done to explain and justify its policies in Iraq and elsewhere. The President has had his political head handed to him time and time again because he has allowed the war’s naysayers to have an open field with which to run wild with accusations about why we went to war in Iraq. For a while, it appeared that the President believed that by keeping a low profile on Iraq, the American people wouldn’t think about it as much. The period immediately following the 2004 election until November of 2005, the President spoke of the War infrequently and with no coherent strategy to counter the myth making of his opponents. When he did start to fight back on Veterans Day, support for the war began to climb.

But today, with public disenchantment for his War policies at an all time high, the President once again appears ready to make a campaign style effort to bolster support for our efforts in Iraq. He and the Vice President will be making several high profile speeches throughout the next two weeks talking up the progress made and the work that still needs to be done. It’s not enough. It’s never been enough. What’s needed is an effort much more sustained and risky.

The President must first get over his reluctance to face the press. Yes, they are a pack of jackals. But one thing the President apparently doesn’t realize is that at these press conferences, he has the last word on every question. And if the press misbehaves (as they almost certainly will), the President underestimates the anger it arouses in ordinary people when they see the White House press corps being arrogant and disrespectful. Many people may not agree with Bush. But attacking the President on live television only serves to generate sympathy for him. (For you doubters out there, I suggest you look at Reagan and Clinton press conferences after Iran-Contra and Monicagate came to light when their support shot up after the press pack misbehaved badly).

The second and equally important thing the President can do is not run away from the War when campaigning for Republican candidates during the upcoming mid-term elections. It would be patently ridiculous to ignore an issue the President has staked his Presidency and his legacy on. And Republicans who think that by not mentioning the war or downplaying its significance they will come out ahead will look equally foolish.

In the coming months, the President will have a fresh opportunity to rally public support for the war. With the release of the Saddam documents, he has been given a new lease on life to frame the war on terms that are politically advantageous to him and Republicans. Whether or not that translates into electoral success is an open question. But it’s a better alternative than trying to sweep the war under the rug and not talk about why we overthrew Saddam Hussein and what we hope to accomplish with the liberation of Iraq.

UPDATE

Read Dean Esmay’s fantastic post on the cycle of deception we are in from the press and the Democrats. Dean also has some links about what people were saying prior to the war and what they’re saying now.