Here's a "captured documents" story from the Daily Tennessean, now being flogged by the Weekly Standard via Glenn Reynolds.
Gosh, captured enemy documents.... Brings back those Viet Nam memories...
Anyhow, the captured document purports to be a list of the 600 closest people in Iraq to Saddam Hussein, published by Saddam's crazy son Uday and showing -- wait for it! -- the long-sought-for-but-never available AQ link. Nice timing!
The story is by a 67-year old judge, not a journalist, so we can't really hold him responsible for his credulousness regarding the "unusual set of circumstances" that caused him to be the recipient of the list.
Interesting if true, but it doesn't let Bush off the hook for the 5 words of dubious provenance in the SOTU on AQ.
Tenet sets the standard: "rise to the level of certainty." The intelligence on AQ available to Bush at the time didn't do that.
"Faith-based intelligence," once again. Whether the faith is justified in retrospect or not is no reason to send hundreds of our soldiers and thousands of Iraqis to their deaths. Especially now, since after The Tenet Affair the intelligence agencies are now 100% politicized.
