Following the link

Billmon has more on that name game going on as the administration scrambles to find a link between Saddam and al Qaeda:

Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names

An allegation that a high-ranking al Qaeda member was an officer in Saddam Hussein's private militia may have resulted from confusion over Iraqi names, a senior administration official said yesterday...

"By most reckoning that would be someone else" other than the airport greeter, said the administration official, who would speak only anonymously because of the matter's sensitivity. He added that the identification issue is still being studied but "it doesn't look like a match to most analysts."

Thank you, Mr. Tenet.

But if you think about it, the story's unlikeliness is pretty apparent: Why would a covert Iraqi military officer posting as an Al Qaeda operative use the same name - presumably his real name - in both capacities? Wouldn't that be just a little too sloppy?

Lehman, who knows when the mud isn't sticking to the wall, promptly has backed away from the Feyadeen allegation - although not the suggestion of a sinister connection:

In an interview yesterday, Lehman said it is still possible the man in Kuala Lumpur was affiliated with Hussein, even if he isn't the man on the Fedayeen roster. "It's one more instance where this is an intriguing possibility that needs to be run to ground," Lehman said. "The most intriguing part of it is not whether or not he was in the Fedayeen, but whether or not the guy who attended Kuala Lumpur had any connections to Iraqi intelligence ... We don't know."

Another of Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns, I guess.

Like I said, these people never tire of being the idiot dupes trying to cover for the Idiot in Chief.

And, it's good to see Billmon come to the bottom line:

The point is that the neocons, in their desperate search for an excuse for having led the country - and their clueless leader - into the Iraq disaster, are staking a claim that intelligence contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda (which is all we have credible evidence of) amount to an intelligence relationship, one serious enough to justify preventative war.

But if that's going to be the standard, then the United States is going to have to invade and occupy virtually every county in the Middle East - including some that definitely aren't on the neocon target list.

In fact, we may have to invade ourselves if we're going to use that reason.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.