Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Apparently, our intelligence agencies don't believe President Bush's accusations of links between Iraq and al Qaeda.  According to this New York Times article, a serious split has emerged between the CIA and the FBI and the rest of the Bush Administration:

Some analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said.

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said.

Basically, Colin Powell will be presenting circumstantial evidence to the United Nations, tentatively linking Iraq to al Qaeda without any significant facts backing that up.  Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein probably has chemical and biological weapons in some capacity, but the Bush Administration has to make the case that the United States needs to act immediately and invade, rather than, say, simply sharing its "super secret" proof of Iraqi weapons with the weapons inspectors.  Reports are suggesting that the Administration's arguments may be tenuous and largely circumstantial, reaching conclusions our intelligence agencies don't even support.

But, we'll just wait and see what Powell actually says.