I'd love to think that this is going to make a big difference, but, alas, I'm pessimistic. I'll explain why below....

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill charges in a new book that President Bush entered office in January 2001 intent on invading Iraq and was in search of a way to go about it....

The former treasury secretary and other White House insiders gave Suskind documents that in the first three months of 2001 revealed the Bush administration was examining military options for removing Saddam Hussein, CBS said.

"There are memos," Suskind told CBS. "One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq."'

Another Pentagon document entitled "Foreign suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts" talks about contractors from 40 countries and which ones have interest in Iraq, Suskind said....

--Reuters

The problem is that credulous Americans will effortlessly fit even this into their Saddam = Osama worldview. How? Thus: Freedom-hating Muslims -- whom we can't possibly differentiate -- hated us and wanted to do us harm, and our brave flight-suit-wearing hero, George W. Bush, knew this, even as far back as the first months of 2001. So when another freedom-hating Muslim, Osama, attacked us on 9/11, Bush's wise policy of regime change for Osama's ally Saddam was vindicated.

Sorry for the gloom. I really hope I'm wrong about this.

It's amazing: This is, literally, a conspiracy theory -- the belief that Saddam and Osama were co-conspirators -- yet those who doubt it are the heretics, the iconoclasts, in American politics. I hope O'Neill's interview and Suskind's book change this, but I'm not holding my breath.