Pretzel Logic

The kind so irrational it would make a dimwit choke.

See also Feith-Based Foreign Policy.

"No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists," Cordesman wrote of Kay's briefing. "Only possibility was Saddam's Fedayeen [his son's irregular terrorist force] and talk only."

One of the concerns the Bush administration cited early last year to justify the need to invade Iraq was that Hussein would provide chemical or biological agents or weapons to al Qaeda or other terrorists. Despite the disclosure that U.S. and British intelligence officials assessed that Hussein would use or distribute such weapons only if he were attacked and faced defeat, administration spokesmen have continued to defend that position.

Last Thursday, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith defended the administration's prewar position at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The idea that we didn't have specific proof that he was planning to give a biological agent to a terrorist group," he said, "doesn't really lead you to anything, because you wouldn't expect to have that information even if it were true. And our intelligence is just not at the point where if Saddam had that intention that we would necessarily know it."

In other words: We were right to claim that Saddam planned to give biological agents to terrorists because our intelligence wasn't good enough to prove he didn't plan to.

Or, in still other words, I know that Douglas J. Feith intends to bugger a mountain goat because I can't prove he doesn't intend to.