"The newly declassified information provides additional dramatic evidence that the [Bush] administration's prewar statements regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda represents [sic] an incredible deception."

National Review, Dec 5, 2005

"The newly declassified information provides additional dramatic evidence that the [Bush] administration's prewar statements regarding links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda represents [sic] an incredible deception." Thus quoth Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and Defender of Truth. The "newly declassified information" is a document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) questioning the credibility of a captured al-Qaeda operative who claimed that Saddam's regime was training terrorists in the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Levin is serving on a Senate committee charged with examining whether prewar statements of public officials were corroborated by intelligence. Leaving aside the unseemliness of his pronouncing on that question before the investigation is complete, we pause to recall a few simple realities. First, the DIA document does not change the fact that almost every intelligence service in the world believed Saddam Hussein possessed WMD; nor does it change Saddam's history of dealing with terrorists. Second, the document does not diminish the plausibility of the assumption that Saddam might have sought WMD and given them to nasty people had he not been removed from power; Bush's doctrine of preemption justifies the war at least as much on the basis of what Saddam could have done as on the basis of what he had already done. Third, a great flying leap separates the conclusion that Bush engaged in deliberate deception from the more reasonable conclusion that he might not have given the DIA document sufficient consideration. Finally, if the president did deceive the entire Democratic establishment, that says something deeply unflattering about the Gullibility Democrats.