The silence is beginning to lift in respect of what really happened on September 6 when Israeli warplanes wheeled deep into Syria to attack a military installation — but not enough for everyone. The Bush administration is playing its cards close to the vest, a silence may be accounted for by its reluctance to let the information about North Korean proliferation of nuclear materials to Syria undermine its nuclear deal with the reclusive, Stalinist Asian regime. That’s certainly the suggestion in Saturday’s op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal by two leading lawmakers. They seek to widen the circle of those receiving briefings on what happened on September 6.

The column, “What Happened in Syria?” is by Peter Hoekstra and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, respectively the senior Republican member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the senior Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. They have already been briefed and suggest that the North Korean involvement must be reviewed by a wider Congressional circle. They also protest the leaks to the New York Times and Washington Post from senior administration officials describing internal divisions in Washington over whether to approve the Israeli strike.

Secretaries Rice and Gates are described in those reports as having argued that a preemptive attack against what is described as a partially constructed nuclear facility would be premature. Vice President Cheney is cited as arguing that Pyongyang’s involvement undercuts the case for the six party deal with North Korea. While the basic facts are being laid out on the table allowing us to partially assemble the jig saw puzzle, speculation continues about what the North Koreans and Syrians were up to. Some things are already clear: The materials in question that had been delivered to the Syrian installation were nuclear. The Syrians already have a large stockpile of chemical weapons.

Jane’s Defence Weekly reported last month that dozens of Iranian engineers and Syrians were killed in July attempting to load a chemical warhead containing mustard gas, VX, and Sarin onto a Scud missile. The Scuds and warheads are of North Korean design and possibly manufacture. Citing widespread doubts that Syria has a sufficiently mature scientific infrastructure to develop a nuclear reactor capable of producing weapons grade materials, James Forsyth and Douglas Davis suggest in London’s Spectator magazine that the North Koreans might have “parked” a stockpile of nuclear material in Syria, a possibility that could revive questions about whether Saddam Hussein did the same before the American invasion.

Meanwhile the New York Times sought to present the administration’s divisions on the Israeli strike as evidence that in the debate about Iran, the upper hand, and the president himself, now belong to the camp that opposes the military option. David Sanger, in “Pre-emptive Caution: The Case of Syria,” wrote that “the risks of taking pre-emptive action now look a lot greater to Mr. Bush than they did in 2003” and that “the talk about preemptive strikes” has been “muted.” Talk about the wish being the father of the thought. There’s hardly been a peep of protest over the raid into Syria, and, if anything, the White House has stepped up its rhetoric about Iran.

On September 12, less than a week after the raid and well before the other newspapers started commenting on it, we issued an editorial “Meanwhile in Syria,” which concluded: “Things are now in motion in a war that is larger than the one about which the Democrats are caviling.” On September 23, the London Sunday Times reported that the attack inside Syria “appears to be part of a wider, secret war against the non-conventional weapons ambitions of Syria and North Korea [and] Iran…” We certainly hope so, but with all due respect to Mr. Hoekstra and Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, we’re not worried that this war is being conducted in twilight. If Syria and Iran acquire nuclear weapons, their terrorist allies will gain access and then, God help the Free World.