He was for transparency before he was against it. Or maybe in-between.

You've probably heard by now that the Bush administration had put on-line several thousand boxes of intelligence documents taken from Iraq--documents that hadn't been vetted, or even translated--in order to let "the power of the 'net" (in the words of Congressman Peter Hoekstra) comb through them and find the evidence that Iraq had WMDs that obviously had to be in there somewhere. Anyways, Attytood has a lengthy post detailing how hard-core conservatives were the ones pushing for this move: bloggers like Instapundit, LGF, and Michelle Malkin, but also people like Hoekstra and Santorum (the same duo who recently said that finding some left-over relics of Saddam's stockpile from the first Gulf War was proof that he had WMDs). Which means that they are indirectly responsible for putting on-line documents (in Arabic) detailing how to create a nuclear weapon.

Well, reading through that post, I noticed a quote that seemed just as headache-inducingly ironic:

Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush's Director of National Intelligence, "owns the documents" and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.

Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren't released sooner. "If I knew then what I know now," Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, "I would have been more supportive of the war."

Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. "This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out."

Because Bush has always been about transparency, openness, and the people's right to know.

*sigh*