If It's October, Does That Mean This Is The Surprise?

I'm extremely hesitant to report this, considering all the falsified documents floating around out there, but everyone else is going with it, and as you'll see CNSNews.com is doing a lot more than CBS did to back up their reporting.

CNSNews.com is reporting that they have obtained 42 pages of documents which purport to show that

numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

If these hold up to scrutiny, they could end up being some serious mojo for the Bush Administration, as they tie Saddam to a number of significant terror events, including the 1993 ambush of American soldiers in Mogadishu.

I'm a bit leery of trusting CNSNews, and would feel better if a different source had broken this story. However, as I said, CNSNews does do one thing which CBS should have done and failed to do with their fake memo story: document their methodology.

In another article, CNSNews.com lays out how they came by the documents, who looked them over, and how others can see the documents for themselves. Although they don't name the source, they do say he/she is NOT a political appointee, and that they did not make contact with either the Republicans or the Democrats. They state that the document was translated by two independent translators, working alone. They state that the documents were examined by three other "experts," (only one remained anonymous) who all had experience with Iraq, in a double-blind test. Finally, they invite all journalists who want to examine the documents to make an appointment for viewing.