Craig Whitlock, Washington Post, 9-27-04

the funny wingnut moment of this week comes with the bush administration’s sudden decision to declassify a bunch of documents dating to just before the iraq war……

the cole post just illustrates the danger of relying on a document for an argument when you can’t read it.

as for myself, i still can’t read most of the damn document.”

The link you provided has no translation of the document. It went from Juan Cole linking to this description: “a letter from an Iraqi intelligence official, dated August 17, 2002, asked agents in the country to be on the lookout for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and another unnamed man whose picture was attached.”

Where is the translation?

this is the specific document right blogistan seems to be getting are excited about.

good luck reading it. it’s a bad copy on top of the fact that whoever wrote it has really illegible handwriting.

seriously, i’ve spent a bit of the day picking out a word or two here and there. i think you have to be a native to make any sense of it.

Here is the link to the documents

http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm

as for myself, i still can’t read most of the damn document. but i think it’s hilarious how the non-arabic reading rightwing is waving the document around like it’s some kind of slam-dunk.

The long awaited public release has occurred. To view the documents, visit the Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center….

There is about to be a “blast” heard around the world as the Bush administration soon releasing some fourty-eight thousand documents related to Saddam’s Regime…

it’s also odd that i can’t find the word “al-qaeda” (القاعدة) anywhere in the document. (which would not be all that surprising if that was a picture of zarqawi because in 2002 zarqawi was a member of the rival tawhid wa-jihaad, not al-qaeda)

it is pretty hard to read though