When you can't keep your story straight

Drudge is featuring a snippet from the latest testimony in the trial of Saddam in which a defense witness alleges that "many" of the 148 men condemned to death after a failed assassination plot are still alive, having become wealthy after the assumption of positions of power.

"I ate with them some time ago," the witness explained.

"If it is true and these people are still alive, this whole case should be reconsidered from the beginning," said the lawyer for Awad al-Bandar, whose revolutionary court under Saddam sentenced the men to death in 1984.

Let's get this straight. Saddam and his defense team have proudly admitted to the executions, but claim that they were perfectly justified, and that all the legal "i"s were dotted and "t"s were crossed. Now they put on as a witness some ex-Abu Graib guard contending that many of the men survived and thrived?

How about UFOs abducted the missing men shortly before they were due to be executed? It would be as believable.

Iraq: where mendacity is a lost art form.