This just in: there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but our releasing of the details of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program could benefit Iran.

If that doesn't sound internally consistent to you at first glance, you're not alone. But that seems to be the big November surprise from The New York Times, which Jim Geraghty makes sense out of. Certainly more sense than Times does; as Geraghty writes:

I think the Times editors are counting on this being spun as a "Boy, did Bush screw up" meme; the problem is, to do it, they have to knock down the "there was no threat in Iraq" meme, once and for all. Because obviously, Saddam could have sold this information to anybody, any other state, or any well-funded terrorist group that had publicly pledged to kill millions of Americans and had expressed interest in nuclear arms. You know, like, oh... al-Qaeda.

The New York Times just tore the heart out of the antiwar argument, and they are apparently completely oblivous to it.

The antiwar crowd is going to have to argue that the information somehow wasn't dangerous in the hands of Saddam Hussein, but was dangerous posted on the Internet. It doesn't work. It can't be both no threat to America and yet also somehow a threat to America once it's in the hands of Iran. Game, set, and match.

As John Stephenson writes, "The New York Times confirms that in 2002 Saddam Hussein’s 'scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away:'" Which hands a nice "See I told you so" moment not just to President Bush, but to to Rick Santorum, though it may be too late for his campaign to benefit from it.

Update: Ed Morrissey adds, " So I Guess The FMSO [Foreign Military Studies Office] Documents Are Legit":

This is apparently the Times' November surprise, but it's a surprising one indeed. The Times has just authenticated the entire collection of memos, some of which give very detailed accounts of Iraqi ties to terrorist organizations. Just this past Monday, I posted a memo which showed that the Saddam regime actively coordinated with Palestinian terrorists in the PFLP as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On September 20th, I reposted a translation of an IIS memo written four days after 9/11 that worried the US would discover Iraq's ties to Osama bin Laden.

More: If--and that's a big if--this story does indeed occur before the election, hasn't the Times rather nicely paved the way for it?