[link|http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/002295.html#002295|Looks like the real thing to him]

Excerpt:

I\ufffdve taken some time to read and digest Hayes\ufffd article. While I\ufffdm not an intelligence analyst, I have read literally hundreds of intelligence summaries in the course of my military career. When you do this every day, you learn how to separate solid, reliable reporting from rumor and speculation.

If a report comes from [link|http://www.npr.org/|a single source with little or no history of accurate reporting], it\ufffds generally considered to be \ufffdadvisory, but not reliable.\ufffd What you give the closest attention are similar reports from multiple, independent sources with established histories of accurate reporting.

What struck me most about the memo was this line, which most readers not familiar with intelligence summaries probably glossed over:
Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17 and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al-Qaida operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Source #4 was described as \ufffda senior Iraqi intelligence officer\ufffd who was debriefed in May 2003.

Source #11 was descibed only as \ufffdsensitive reporting,\ufffd which generally refers to an active source with access to the enemy.

Source #15 was described as \ufffda foreign government service,\ufffd probably an intelligence agency.

Source #16 was described as \ufffdCIA reporting.\ufffd Self-explanatory.

Sources #17 and #18 are not characterized.

Taken alone, these independent reports from six separate sources would generally be considered corroborated and highly reliable. But these meetings were also reported in the mainstream media. Newsweek wrote about the connection between Saddam and Bin Laden in January 1999, and The Guardian reported on it the following month.
The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq.

Indeed, the evidence was so convincing, that Clinton\ufffds CIA chief James Woolsey, appearing on CNN\ufffds Late Edition this past weekend, described it as a \ufffdslam dunk.\ufffd

While none of this yet confirms a link between Saddam and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it is clear that the Iraqi government was in communication with Usama bin Laden, and it appears likely that they formed some sort of mutually beneficial working relationship.

The war in Iraq was, in fact, a legitimate act of self-defense by the United States of America.

Democratic partisans will, predictably, continue to talk down these reports. This is not because they don\ufffdt want to believe that Saddam Hussein could have consorted with terrorists, but rather because many Democratic candidates have staked out anti-war positions \ufffd and any evidence linking Saddam and Usama could serve to undermine their chances of regaining the White House in 2004.

I say:

I'm sure there's some perfectly innocent explanation for all these high level contacts. Not.