Juan Cole points out this article from the U.K.'s Telegraph, which features blind quotes from American intelligence officers in Iraq suggesting that al-Zarqawi (the prominent guest star in tonight's debate) may not be the terrorist kingpin everyone thinks he is:
We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," the agent said.
"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."