The Times Has Done It Again

This time, though, I think they're going to be pretty unhappy about what they've done.  Attempting to go on offense and administer the coup de grace to their beleaguered opponent, the NY Times exposes a story today how Iraqi nuclear weapons documents posted on the internet may have helped Iran along in their weapons development.

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans  who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Whoa!  Let me see if I understand this.  As far back as 1991 Iraq had the blueprints in place for nuclear weapons?  So then all it needed to do, really, was lift themselves free of the sanctions, and they'd have been able to reconstitute a nuke program?  Nigerian yellowcake, anyone?  You remember yellowcake.  That's the stuff that Joseph Wilson wrote in a NY Times op-ed that Iraq wasn't seeking.

Unfortunately, some of the stuff showed up elsewhere and was traced back to Iraq, in 2004.

AMSTERDAM -- The United Nations nuclear watchdog confirmed yesterday that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material known as yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbor.

But I digress.

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

[...]

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

So in 2002 "Mr. Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away?"  No WMD, indeed.

Jim Geraghty at NRO:

What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been "no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat", for the past three years solid. Now we're being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.

Let's go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.

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 oblivious 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.

Back to the Times, whose inept efforts on this offensive possession are apparent.

The director of national intelligence, John. D. Negroponte, had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence officials felt implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of government analysts. But President Bush approved the site’s creation after Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the documents’ release.

Yup, it was Mr. Bush and those evil Congressional Republicans who published information on how to build a nuke that we've been saying Iraq didn't have.  Doh!!

Sometimes when you take a shot on offense you turn the ball over.  This one just got run back for a touchdown.

Prediction:  This has a much greater chance to sway votes than Senator Kerry's Freudian slip.  It backs up the WMD portion of the initial rationale for the Iraq war, in spades, the same rationale that caused 77 senators and 296 representatives to vote for authorization of military action.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.

Hours earlier, the House approved an identical resolution, 296-133.

Others blogging: Allah at Hot Air, Curt at Flopping Aces, Kim at Wizbang!, Blue Crab Boulevard, Michelle Malkin, Captain Ed at CQ, Tigerhawk, The Anchoress, AJ Strata

11/3/06 1000:  A refresher:

I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior which is at the core of the cease-fire agreement, with no reach, no stretch, is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by use of force, if necessary. The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons.

He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation.

--Senator John Kerry, October 9, 2002

11/3/06 1440: Michelle Malkin posts Rep. Pete Hoekstra's statement in response to the NY Times story:

"The sad reality is that the New York Times has done far more damage to U.S. national security by the disclosure of vital, classified, intelligence programs than is likely to be caused by the inadvertent disclosure of decades-old information that had already been in the hands of Saddam's regime."

That's gonna sting.  Read the whole thing

Comments

[Scott A.]

Steps for you to take:
#1. Go slap somebody at the NT Times for not being able to clearly state timelines of events they report on, and the content of papers they mention. They should have gotten somebody not familiar with the story to read over their copy to make sure it was clear to even people with the most basic of reading skills.

#2. Go slap your grade-school English teachers for not teaching you how to read ambiguous statements and look for clues to clarify that ambiguity.

The papers in question - if you bothered to read up on them - were talking about programs from the 80's and early 1990's - BEFORE the 1991 war & sanctions. (these reports just happen to have been _submitted_ to the UN in 1996 and 2002 in compliance with weapons inspection mandates – but they were talking about programs that were long since dead). If you'll recall, in the 1980’s, the US was supplying Iraq with WMD and nuclear technology b/c the US was so scared they might not hold off Iran. – Heck, Donald Rumsfeld was directly involved with giving them such tech support in the 1980's for cry'n out loud!

But that was then - pre 1991.
NOTHING of substance has been found since then which substantiates and meaningful capabilities in WMD production – and certainly not in the quantities that would be necessary to start an unprovoked war and occupation.

Read up on this stuff before you post such useless drivel - people may actually be reading this site and believing the lies you are inadvertently spreading.

[Giacomo]

So, what you're saying, in essence, is that even though Saddam's Iraq had classified documents which quite clearly showed that they knew how to build a nuke, and even though the Senate Select Intelligence report showed they were shopping for uranium in Niger in 1999, and even though the Duelfer ISG report stated they still wanted to build one once they were free of sanctions, they couldn't have built a bomb at any time in the future because they reported to the UN that they couldn't as late as 2002 and the knowledge of how to do it was 12 years old. I see.

You're also apparently saying that once we give out nuclear technology - which we may or may not have done (I frankly doubt you have a reference that proves that accusation) - we have no right to realize that the recipient has later become a threat and act?

Let's just assume for a second that these ancient bomb-building secrets from before 1991 were still in their possession, where we found them, and that they still would work if applied, which is what the NY Times article said. Is there anything - anything at all - that would have stopped them from resuming their nuke programs after the Oil For Food corruption motivated UN security council members France and Russia to help them getting sanctions dropped? I mean anything short of the action of American soldiers.

By the way, don't hurl out insults, even veiled ones, at this blog - we don't tolerate them here. You get one pass. Don't do it again. By the way, you'll need a real email address next time or your comment will be "reformatted" as I see fit if it's relevant and deleted if it's not. My house, my rules.