News that's fit to print:

Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.

The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks ago, before the commission's report was released. Since obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several military, intelligence and United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government considered it authentic.

...The document, which asserts that Mr. bin Laden "was approached by our side," states that Mr. bin Laden previously "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative," but was now willing to meet in Sudan, and that "presidential approval" was granted to the Iraqi security service to proceed.

Congratulations to the New York Times for reporting this, even though the newspaper's timing versus its politicking against the president leaves much to be desired. And there's a dig at Ahmed Chalabi that, if one parses semantics carefully, is tangential to questions of the documents' authenticity. Will John Kerry acknowledge this? Doing so would require a 180-degree turn from a statement he made just a week ago, when he declared "this administration took its eye off of al-Qaida, took its eye off of the real war on terror in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan and transferred it for reasons of its own to Iraq." But flip-flops are a favorite for Kerry, the original Candidate Mxyzptlk. Besides, as well as Bill Kristol lambastes the Democratic presidential candidate, Kerry was careful to only imply an absence of Iraq-al Qaeda links, providing red meat for party faithful and an escape hatch to ditch the statement in events like — why, like the publication of investigative news stories such as this one.

If John Kerry were coming from the geostrategic perspective of Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, one where the threat of Saddam Hussein and his terrorist ties are immutable laws of our world, and the presidential campaign were truly about how to best fight terrorism and the nations and cultures that mass-produce it, the Massachusetts senator might have a message attractive to most Americans. As it stands, his foreign policy platform depends on blocking out or qualifying the kind of news the Times made today, denying the inextricable link between dictatorship and insecurity — in this case, terrorism. Trying to appease a core constituency agnostic to moral definitions of good and evil, democracy and despotism, all while seeking a complex matter to exploit as a campaign issue, Kerry is at perpetual war with facts; facts that may pile up considerably by November.