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.
Thanks! I was waiting for somebody to say it .. LOL!
BINGO!
Yes! Found exactly what I knew had to be out there:
This gets better and better. One of the Times experts, Peter Zimmerman, says this in the Times article.
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.”
But as Tom Maguire points out, back in August 2003 he had a different story.
President Bush said that in the early 1990s Iraq “had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.” Not exactly.
Nuclear weapons experts serving as inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called the bomb “design” more of a parts list than a description of a buildable device. The five ways to enrich uranium really boiled down to two – electromagnetic separation and gas centrifuges, neither working well. Iraq’s crude experiments in the 1990s showed that it was a very long way from nuclear success.
http://www.polipundit.com/
I just hope that Tony Snow and Rush and others know about this quote. Everybody needs to know just what kind of game the NYT and the democrats are playing.
-As long as Saddam had the money, and as long as he was in power he was going to have the money, he could have bought a nuke from Libya, North Korean, or that A.Q. Khan creep.--
Exactly. And Saddam had those illegal 'al-Hussein' missiles in range of Israel. It was only a matter of time, the Norks could have sold him the designs to fit them with warheads.
--The Iraqis had a nuclear weapons program in 1991. This story reveals that the Iraqis cooperated with the IAEA inspectors in making a report on what they had accomplished in that pre-1991 program.--
The NYT is trying to emphasize the pre-1991 program, but they have opened a huge Pandora's box. Check out the PRE-WAR DOCS section of FR.
JVeritas shows that there is a LOT more to the story than the pre-1991 stuff. There are some chilling nuke-related docs ranging from 1999 to OCTOBER 2002. The UN inspectors never saw those before their capture.
I see it that way too. It will be bad. I let my good nature blind me to the NYT's bad intentions. This is a dirty trick. If it was dangerous for the website to have exposed so much, I'm sure it was earlier than a few days before a big election. THIS is bad.
Luckily, the voters will decide that Dems are better than Reps on national security and put into the office the people least likely to do anything about Iran./sarc
1998
500 tons of explosives missing.
Explosives used for a nuclear device...
There's not enough time before the election.
I couldn't remember for what. I vaguely recall that the IAEA had something to do with it (the story) too? Dems ran with that for a long time.
Al Qaqaa is to Macaca as niggardly is to
I'm surprised mohawk-haired liitle children didn't complain when their teachers read about Al Qaqaa to them in 2004.
In all seriousness, I don't trust El Baradei. It is obvious what is going on. A foreigner is once again injecting himself in our election.
all this is is the OLD LIBERAL HAG, the nyslimes, trying to post a NOVEMBER SURPRISE story to try and screw the Pubs, AND get the john F'ing kerry story off the radar.
Hmmm, which year would they be a 'year away' in - th 1990's or 2002?
That's a no brainer. If it was the 1990's they would have had one already.
Yes. The point of their story is that Dems are better for national security in general, and better with dealing with Iran, specifically. It makes no sense, but that's how it will play. They will do it smarter. Note how often the Dems use that word. Repubs are always dumb, because in their world everything is black and white. This really should be a minor story, as it wasn't Bush who said release dangerous info to Iran and terrorists. IIRC, he wanted them checked before posting.
If this feels familiar, it is. I see a pattern. I hope the WH was ready for this. The missing explosives story hurt (a little- but this close to election, little time to deal with it). http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1255761/posts?q=1&&page=351
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
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