Jason Zengerle devastates the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes in this week’s New Republic. Here’s how the column begins (TNR subscription required):

Earlier this month, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported what seemed to be big news. In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had concluded that a captured Al Qaeda commander named Ibn Al Shaykh Al Libi was probably lying when he told debriefers that Saddam Hussein had provided chemical and biological weapons training to the terrorist group. Still, the newspapers reported that, even after this, the Bush administration used Libi’s claims to sell the war. Colin Powell touted Libi’s statements as evidence of a Saddam-Al Qaeda link in his February 2003 presentation to the United Nations; President Bush did the same in an October 2002 address to the nation.

And, yet, the news was greeted with a collective yawn. The Times buried its article on page A14, the Post on page A22. The Bush administration, meanwhile, declined to comment for either article; nor did Bush officials feel the need to address the stories in subsequent days. All of which proved that, nearly three years after the Bush administration claimed that Saddam’s ties to Al Qaeda were a primary justification for the war in Iraq, no one–not even the administration itself–is now willing to seriously argue that the dictator and the terrorist group had a meaningful relationship.

Well, no one, that is, except for Stephen Hayes. Like a Japanese soldier hiding in a cave who never got the news that the emperor had surrendered, Hayes, a writer for The Weekly Standard, continues to fight–stubbornly insisting that Saddam did, in fact, support Al Qaeda.