William Bennett notes this amazing confession by Jay Rockefeller.

Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, the following exchange took place between Chris Wallace and U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

WALLACE: Now, the President never said that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat. As you saw, you did say that. If anyone hyped the intelligence, isn't it Jay Rockefeller?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The — I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I'll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq — that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

While Democrats in Washington are berating the White House for having prewar intelligence wrong, a high-profile U.S. senator, member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, who has a name more internationally recognizable than Richard Cheney's, tells two putative allies (Saudi Arabia and Jordan) and an enemy who is allied with Saddam Hussein (Syria) that the United States was going to war with Iraq. This is not a prewar intelligence mistake, it is a prewar intelligence giveaway.

Syria is not only on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the country many speculate is where Hussein has secreted weapons, it is also the country from which terrorists are flowing into Iraq to fight our troops and allies. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have had, over the years, conflicted loyalties. What was Senator Rockefeller doing? What was he thinking? And all this before President Bush even made a public speech about Iraq — to the U.N. or anyone else.

This is amazing stuff that the minority ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee would tell Syria his own personal opinion of American foreign policy and our likely war against Iraq. Coming from him, such a statement would carry so much more weight than any column or article in the newspaper. Of course, this is the same Senator who got up on the Senate floor and gave a speech on the "imminent threat" that Saddam Hussein represented to the United States, as statement that no one in the Bush administration made and which Bush was careful to reject explicitly. Now Rockefeller is leading the charges against the Bush administration and implying that Rockefeller was just duped about pre-war intelligence. Rockefeller has sacrificed his integrity for partisan points. He is totally irresponsible.