GOSSIPY CHENEY-RELATED THEORY OF THE DAY

As heard on Franken this morning, from Nation writer and author John Nichols, author of Dick: The Man Who Is President.

On monday, Don Rumsfeld said this about possible links between Saddam and Al Qaeda:

"I have seen the answer to that question migrate in the intelligence community over a period of a year in the most amazing way," he told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations after being asked what Saddam's connection to al-Qaeda was.

Mr Rumsfeld said there were differences in the intelligence community as to what the relationship was.

"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

Monday, of course, was the day before the Vice Presidential debate.

The Vice Presidential debate features, of course, the Vice President, one Dick Cheney. Cheney, of course, is the most obsessed proponent of the idea that Saddam had Qaeda connections, referring to them as "an established relationship" early on in the debate.

The gossipy speculation part is: Back in 2000, when Cheney was in charge of Bush's running-mate search committee, there was speculation that Rummy -- a former Secretary of Defense under Ford -- was in the running for the nod. When Cheney ended up picking the most qualified Republican he could find -- himself -- Rummy may have felt slighted. And the theory follows that perhaps this informed the timing of his Saddam/AlQaeda statement yesterday.

I'm not sure how much there is to that. But I will say that not a lot of what these guys say is timed accidentally.