That’s former State Department intelligence officer Greg Thielmann talking to Inter Press Service News Agency about Douglas Feith’s leaked briefing papers on Saddam’s links to al-Qaeda. Feith’s Office of Special Projects was installed by the Bush administration inside the Pentagon and tasked with inventing reasons, propaganda, and evidence to justify invading Iraq.

[The briefing] consisted of 50 excerpts taken from raw, mostly uncorroborated intelligence reports from sources of varying reliability from 1990 to 2002, which purported to show an operational relationship between the captured leader and the group.

But when it was published, former intelligence officials dismissed the work as amateurish, unsubstantiated and indicative, even if most of the allegations were true, of the absence of any operative relationship.

“This is meant to dazzle the eyes of the not terribly educated.” I repeat the quote because it’s so true.

A few weeks ago the briefing was displayed as indisputable proof that Saddam dang near was Osama after all. Nobody bought it- except those referred to in that quote.