Even by FOX News standards this is ______________ (insert disparaging word of your choice).

"Was Iraq Behind the Oklahoma City Bombing?

The Big Story With John Gibson (FOX News)

Even though the title of his opinion piece ends with a question mark, John Gibson has no doubts: the Oklahoma city bombing 10 years ago "stinks of Iraq."

On Tuesday's show you heard FOX News' Rita Cosby talking about the quite shocking claims made by a group of victims' families that Iraq was at the bottom of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City.

This has come up before: A reporter named Jayna Davis has a book out about it.

Well, yes, it has come up before -- usually in media outlets like FOX News, NewsMax, and WorldNet Daily. Conspiracy theories linking Iraq to the Oklahoma City bombing sprang up almost immediately, waxed and waned over the years, and have taken stronger hold since 9/11. And, yes, Jayna Davis has written a book about the alleged links, The Third Terrorist.

Not mentioned by Gibson (how could he have overlooked it?), but Davis includes Osama bin Laden in the OKC plot too:

A former investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City last night told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly she has gathered massive evidence of a foreign conspiracy involving Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the 1995 bombing of the federal building that killed 168 people.

Jayna Davis, former reporter for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, says she took her evidence -- including hundreds of court records, 24 sworn witness statements and reports from law enforcement, intelligence and terror experts -- to the FBI, which refused even to accept the material.

Gibson is puzzled:

So now the question: So if there is all this evidence, why has the U.S. government ignored it?

Good question, especially for a FOX News on-air personality. Gibson proposes several possibilities, but this is by far my favorite, if only for its convenient obtuseness:

If McVeigh were just the grunt — mixing the chemicals, driving the truck, setting the timer, and running off — guilty though he might be, if the bombing was a plot by a foreign government, his lawyer would have had a chance at the sentencing hearing to argue that others were more responsible and McVeigh should not be executed.

The fear that the McVeigh execution might have been an error — and a mistaken execution — could put the federal death penalty itself in jeopardy. The fear of losing the federal death penalty could explain why the U.S. government does not appear to be anxious to act on evidence it has that Iraq may have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing.

In FOX News land, this passes as a well-reasoned explanation: (1)The US government sits on information that not only Osama bin Laden but also Iraq were involved in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building; (2) the government withholds this evidence because it has already executed fair-haired native son Timothy McVeigh; (3) McVeigh's execution was a "mistaken execution" -- Gibson doesn't explain how or why; (4) the ensuing public relations nightmare growing out of this "mistaken execution" would bring about the end of the federal death penalty -- and we wouldn't want that to happen now, would we.

As my favorite clerk at the local video store likes to say, "Way twisted." And he's usually right.