[...]The Bush administration claims the Saudis have been much more cooperative in the war on terror since the May 2003 bombing in Riyadh. But whether or not that's the case, and whether or not the administration's policy toward Saudi Arabia is now tough enough, there's simply no excuse for averting our eyes to the pre-9/11 situation. (In an unclassified part of the report, one government official is said to have told the committee that "it was clear from about 1996 that the Saudi government would not cooperate with the United States on matters related to Osama bin Laden.") The administration's censorship simply invites further questions about the extent to which we turned a blind eye to that failure to cooperate, or, for example, about why the bin Laden extended family was allowed suddenly to depart to Saudi Arabia shortly after September 11. There's no reason for the Bush administration now to be covering up the bipartisan disgrace of pre-9/11 U.S.-Saudi policy. Doing so simply gives fresh ammunition to its critics when the administration should be going on the offensive in making the (strong) case for its foreign policy.