Last month, documents supposedly showing Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger were exposed as obvious fakes. But these papers, trumpeted by American officials as evidence of Saddam's nefarious designs, weren't the first attempts by Western governments to fudge the truth about Iraqi weapon programs, Seymour Hersh writes in this week's New Yorker.

"Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997," he contends.

(At that time), at least one member of the U.N. inspection team (in Iraq) who supported the American and British position arranged for dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tipsódata known as inactionable intelligenceóto be funneled to (British intelligence) operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere.

'It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldnít move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world,' the former officer said.

Saddam's a bad enough dude in his own right. Why bother making stuff up about him?