By Larry Elder

The WikiLeaks de facto declassification of privileged material makes it case closed: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction — and intended to restart his program once the heat was off.

President George W. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union address, uttered the infamous “16 words”: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Former Ambassador Joe Wilson sprang into action and, in an op-ed piece, in effect wrote, “No, the Cheney administration sent me to investigate the allegation — and I found it without merit.”

Put aside that Wilson’s CIA-employed wife, not the evil Vice President Dick Cheney — as Wilson implied — sent him on the African errand. Put aside that the British still stand by the intelligence on which Bush made the claim. And put aside that the anti-Bush Washington Post, in an editorial, concluded that Wilson had lied about not finding evidence to support the Iraq-in-Africa-for-uranium claim, since he told the CIA the opposite when he reported back from Africa.