"The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein."
The implication being than they wanted to “manufacture” dangers instead of looking for the proof of what they already had a good idea about.
"Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure."
So Iraq had manuals for making tabun and sarin, tons of chemical agents, the equipment for processing it, chemical suits and factories but didn’t actually put it all together? I am not buying it.
"The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who argued that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion."
Why aren’t ALL media outlets interested? Is this a reflection more on conservatives being more interested in history or proving liberal media bias? Also, those in the know will confirm that recovered boxes have absolutely not been adequately analyzed and I don’t know of anyone even pretending that they have been.
"The Web site, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal,” was a constantly expanding portrait of prewar Iraq. Its many thousands of documents included everything from a collection of religious and nationalistic poetry to instructions for the repair of parachutes to handwritten notes from Mr. Hussein’s intelligence service. It became a popular quarry for a legion of bloggers, translators and amateur historians."
Correct, a full blackout from the mainstream media who has acted curiously uninterested in the documents.
"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."
Saddam was a year away in the 90’s or in 2002?
"European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United Nations Security Council in late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms."
So information about Iraq’s weapons programs, that wasn’t turned over to the proper authorities, was only discovered post invasion?
"In Europe, a senior diplomat said atomic experts there had studied the nuclear documents on the Web site and judged their public release as potentially dangerous. “It’s a cookbook,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his agency’s rules. “If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.”
Obviously the Iraqis were farther along than everyone knew or this wouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Right????
"Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government arms scientist now at the war studies department of King’s College, London, called the posted material “very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data.”
Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, an arms design center, said “some things in these documents would be helpful” to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret."
So the public has never been told of Saddam’s full nuclear capabilities? When were we going to find out? Wouldn’t that information change the way people view the war?
"Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, translated and interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess the intelligence agencies’ view that Mr. Hussein did not have unconventional weapons or substantive ties to Al Qaeda. Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden on busy intelligence analysts, they argued."
Talk about CYA. What’s more important, the truth or the reputation of our intelligence agencies?
"Some of the first posted documents dealt with Iraq’s program to make germ weapons, followed by a wave of papers on chemical arms."
But...but....I thought Iraq didn’t ever have or know how to make such things? In all seriousness, these manuals being passed to terrorists were one of the major reasons for removing Saddam.
"At the United Nations in New York, the chemical papers raised alarms at the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which had been in charge of searching Iraq for all unconventional arms, save the nuclear ones."
If UNMOVIC knew what was going on then none of these findings should be a surprise. Apparently they didn’t.
"In April, diplomats said, the commission’s acting chief weapons inspector, Demetrius Perricos, lodged an objection with the United States mission to the United Nations over the document that dealt with the nerve agents tabun and sarin.
Soon, the document vanished from the Web site. On June 8, diplomats said, Mr. Perricos told the Security Council of how risky arms information had shown up on a public Web site and how his agency appreciated the American cooperation in resolving the matter."
What else has been suppressed in the name of unknown international bureaucrats?
You are a treasure-tROVE! BTTT!
""Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents about chemical weapons, United Nations arms-control officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill by causing respiratory failure." So Iraq had manuals for making tabun and sarin, tons of chemical agents, the equipment for processing it, chemical suits and factories but didn’t actually put it all together? I am not buying it.
I can't quite tell if the NYT is reporting that Iraq was a year away from an atom bomb in 1991 or 2002.
Thank you, ikez78. On the one hand, I'm so proud of the freepers and others who have worked on this project and shown what a lot of liars the media is--on the other, it's just so demoralizing that now that they admit there was something to all this, they now claim these documents that they've previously dismissed with a snicker, that these documents gave Iran secrets.
I know hatred is not healthy for the soul, but I truly, deeply, and thoroughly hate, despise, and loathe the NYT and quite probably all Democrats.
Thanks for the ping. I got a lot of catching up to do as I get dozens of pings on some days. I don't see on the fly any new news as what Iraq had or was planning on having in due course.
This stuff only once again confirms we know they had plans in all phases of wmd research and development, as well as clandestine operations while the UN teams where farting around for all those years.