The surface has barely been scratched on the exploitation of millions of Iraqi intel files, so what we will know several months or years down the road about the Saddam Hussein regime’s dealings with other governments and terrorist groups is difficult to say. But while a more definitive answer on the Iraq/Qaeda connection awaits, it seems safe to say there is a meaningful connection between author Peter Bergen and the New York Times. Both are invested in there being no connection and both are busy as bees protecting their investment (see here and here).

Today’s assignment is to undercut the weight of the document exploitation which, paltry though it has been, is nonetheless already throwing the “no connection” crowd for a loop. The Times’ anxiousness to call the game “over” and declare an outcome before there can have been any serious study is riotous. Indeed, the newspaper-of-record’s interest in the Iraq intel files is rivaled only by the steely determination it showed in moving heaven and earth to get to the bottom of the case of … uh … what was his name again? – oh, yeah, Sandy Berger.

Would it really be that dark a day on West 43rd Street if it turned out that Bush was right about Iraq? And just imagine what we’d be hearing from the Times’ editors if, say, the Scooter Libby investigation had been dropped without charges or further inquiry after about one percent of the documentary evidence had been examined (and had shown indicia of guilt!).

Meanwhile, Bergen’s razor-sharp reasoning is on display with assertions like this one: “unlike Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the two sides [Iraq and al Qaeda, that is] had nothing practical to gain by working together.” Mr. Bergen, Iraq’s number one enemy was the United States. So was (and is) al Qaeda’s. Even if one were to agree, for argument’s sake, that we were on tabula rasa, with no clues yet, and absolutely, positively no evidence of a connection, it would be the height of silliness to claim that two camps with one principal common enemy had nothing practical to gain by working together. Certainly the Times’ other oft-cited terrorism expert, Richard Clarke, had a different view in early 1999, when, as Clinton administration counter-terror czar, he insisted to Sandy What’s-his-name (who was then National Security Adviser) that “old wily Osama [would] likely boogie to Baghdad” if things got too hot for him in Afghanistan. (See 9/11 Commission Report 134.)

Anyway, Steve Hayes already has a rebuttal (aptly titled “Choosing Ignorance”) posted at the Weekly Standard’s site, and Tom Joscelyn has a very interesting post on Saddam and the insurgency over at his blog.