It was the State of the Union Address, which gets the largest viewing and listening audience and the most media attention (including detailed critical exigesis by supporters and opponents) of any speech a President gives all year. It's also, because of the place it's delivered, part of the Congressional Record, an official document that is preserved forever.

It's not off-the-cuff. It's not written at short notice. It's not a short speech in a tea room or at a Republican fundraiser. It's a deliberate statement by the President to Congress and the nation concerning the Administration's past actions and future plans, and the reasoning behind them.

If a piece of information is only a guess, a responsible person would leave it out of a speech of this magnitude and save it for a less official venue to reveal to the public and the press. Unless one didn't really care whether the State of the Union was true or false, as long as it got one to one's desired location. In this case, Bahgdad, apparently.

If the CIA's military and political intelligence is composed mostly of guesses, we should rename it the Conjectural Inferrence Agency. I like their website, though. It really helps the middle schoolers with their social studies reports.