This is just too good

In an interview on British TV, Paul Bremer was asked about a quote that there was "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq and that the Iraq Survey Group had unearthed compelling evidence that showed Saddam Hussein had attempted to "conceal weapons."

Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's top official in Baghdad, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue....

It was, he suggested, a 'red herring', probably put about by someone opposed to military action in Iraq who wanted to undermine the coalition.

'I don't know where those words come from but that is not what David Kay has said,' he told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby programme. 'It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me.'

The source of the quote was British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Christmas message to UK troops in Iraq.

Thanks to Just a Bump in the Beltway for tipping us to the article in the UK paper The Observer.

Footnote: That same article says

In recent days, senior Whitehall officials have raised the extraordinary possibility that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction after all - but believed he did after being misled by his own advisors.

That would be in line with what AP was reporting nearly a month ago that Iraqi scientists were telling US interrogators about Iraq's moribund nuclear program, as I noted at the time.