We Have Never Suppressed the UNDP Report, and We Will Stop Doing So In the Future

The State Department's spokesman, Richard Boucher, denies everything.

This is why Thomas Friedman is my hero: he's so dependable and so often correct that when he speaks, Washington listens. If Maureen Dowd or Bob Herbert had written the same article, it might have led to a resounding silence. Of course, the upshot is that Friedman may have been wrong. In any case, InstantReplay looks forward to the release of the UNDP's third Arab Human Development Report. We're gratified that the Bush administration is (publically, at least) lauding it. Hopefully American support for the report won't dilute its poignancy in the Arab debate surrounding reform.

For your further research, the first two volumes of the project can be found online: 2002 volume, 2003 volume. A million copies of the first one alone have been downloaded.