COLUMNIST ROBERT NOVAK recently made the case that September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta did not meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague last year. The Czech officials who originally made that allegation, he wrote last Monday, “are divided and confused.” If such a meeting did not take place, Novak argues, linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks becomes more difficult, and rallying the world to oust him, nearly impossible. Even for those of us who disagree with his conclusions, Novak, who has long been my role model, makes a compelling case based, as always, on good reporting.

But then he goes further, and this is where he runs into a problem. He attempts to bolster his case–“whether the Iraqis possess biological weapons capability is unknown and debatable”–by relying on analysis from former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter.