Posted on 11/02/2006 8:09:04 PM PST by hipaatwo
When I saw the headline on Drudge earlier tonight, that the New York Times had a big story coming out tomorrow that had something to do with Iraq and WMDs, I was ready for an October November Surprise.
Well, Drudge is giving us the scoop. And if it's meant to be a slam-Bush story, I think the Times team may have overthunk this:
U.S. POSTING OF IRAQ NUKE DOCS ON WEB COULD HAVE HELPED IRAN...
NYT REPORTING FRIDAY, SOURCES SAY: Federal government set up Web site — Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal — to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war; detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research; a 'basic guide to building an atom bomb'... Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency fear the information could help Iran develop nuclear arms... contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that the nuclear experts say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums...
Website now shut... Developing...
I'm sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?
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 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.
Umm, no. It's a poorly written paragraph of the article, but they're not saying Iraq was one year away from having an atomic bomb in 2002 - they mean 1991.
Iraqi security forces continue to develop into a capable force and continue to take the lead. On Tuesday in Ramadi, the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Brigade of the 7th Iraqi Army Division assumed responsibility in its area of operations.
This now makes 90 Iraq army battalions in the lead. In total today, there are six of 10 Iraqi army divisions in the lead, 30 of 36 Iraqi brigades, and 90 of 112 Iraqi battalions in the lead. And we operate in support of them.
All across Iraq, we continue to see an increasingly capable Iraqi security force continuing to take the lead.
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6836&Itemid=30
OK-so if they are so in a wad about the documents showing the nuke program they are going to have to give equal weight to the documents that show he had a WMD program and when those documents are dated.
If anything, they have given notice to ALL the documents and their contents.
This has to go in the RYMB category
Ping info & last nites article on this, here!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1730449/posts
Chrissy Matthews will wet himself over another non story.
And do you know what %&!!@# you can do with Aluminum Tubes!!
Good post (#24). I hope you're right...
Hi blondee123, please allow me to put my bookmark on your chair. :)
..but I got a feeling this NYTimes article is somehow related to it.
No they aren't.
It's a surprisingly poorly-written and confusing article by NYT standards, but you've really got to read the thing twice and really understand the nature of the documents. They're reports BY the Iraqis TO the international inspectors, the Iraqis doing what they were required to do, summarizing the nuclear research they did PRIOR to the 1991 Gulf War.
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq 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.
It doesn't get any sweeter than this. NYT confirms Bush was right on WMD!
Iraq had not yet come up with a design for a workable weapon in 1991. Try again.
OK, but it should be at the link I posted. I don't have any inside scoop or anything, just have a friend who kind of knows some people. This just came through as a newsletter to him it appears. He just helped me with a problem with some info I've been compiling, but I still need a good source.
So they just had the retained knowledge and could start it up as soon as they wanted to? Like, say, in a year?
"Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war."
Captured during the war. First line of the article.
Uh no they could not have meant that. Iraq did not have a workable design for a nuclear weapon in 1992.
If you consider "sweet" to be a very poorly written paragraph that you're completely misunderstanding, I guess.
Exactly!
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