THOSE ALLEGED AL-QAEDA TORTURE DRAWINGS FOUND IN IRAQ

Look, they could be legit, but (sorry, this is going to be somewhat graphic) why would you need to do an elaborate full-color sketch of a cleaver cutting off someone's hand, or a hand being pierced by a drill? Does a torturer need a diagram in order to figure out how to do those things? Same with dragging someone behind a car -- seems like that would be pretty self-explanatory, no?

And don't tell me these are meant to intimidate people -- how does a drawing do that? A video, yes -- we see the violence happening to a real person. But a sketch?

I'm not saying for certain that the thing isn't legit. All I'm saying is that the Bushies very well might be using the Smoking Gun (!) to disseminate disinformation -- in this case, gory images meant to indelibly imprint the message that gruesome treatment of detainees in Iraq is the work of al-Qaeda, and only al-Qaeda. (Funny, our government never seems to have released any pictures of corpses of Iraqis tortured with drills. Ah, but that's been the handiwork of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, so never mind.)

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ACTUALLY: The longer I think about this, the more likely it seems to be a fake -- why do these drawings and hide them in a safe house? If they're not instructional and they're not being disseminated as a means of intimidation, what the hell's the point?

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UPDATE: Amnesty International, astonishingly enough, has not instantly issued a statement of condemnation based on an unverified report disseminated on the Smoking Gun -- so mid-list righty blogger Don Surber is in a huff, Glenn Reynolds, naturally, says AI is guilty of complicity. Because the DoD would never spread disinformation, would it?

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OH, LOOK: I'm "the left."

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UPDATE, MONDAY NIGHT: Via comments, here are a couple more skeptics.