"So they just had the retained knowledge and could start it up as soon as they wanted to? Like, say, in a year?"
Yes. IMHO. All Saddam would need is scientists and centrifuges - he had the uranium (under seal, but Iran broke seals too).
"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."
Captured during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 ... let's be clear about it.
The UN inspectors, and 1991 war did *not* clean out Saddam's WMD documents or his programs fully. Saddam kept secret documents on them.
Let's review the tape, shall we:
1. Saddam had serious nuclear program during 1970s and 1980s. It was stunted but not stopped by Osirak reactor bombing by Israelis.
2. After Desert Storm, the ceasefire agreement required Saddam to reveal his WMD programs. He never willingly revealed his nuclear program, but it was uncovered, and we were shocked to find him close to having operational nukes.
3. After 12 years of sanctions and lack of answers on WMDs, and multiple cases where Iraq lied (like about bio-weapons), and 17 resolutions by the UN, the US decided the
4. In Operation Iraqi Freedom we uncovered documents the Iraqis still had on hand up until 2003. These documents would give an future Iraqi WMD program a "roadmap" for building an atom bomb that would shave off many years of any such program.
5. The fact that Iraq successfully held on those documents through 12 years of sanctions and inspections indicates that they *never* would have been exposed and removed. Saddam could have restarted them at any time.
The NYTimes is in a snit over possible leakage of some sensitive information, although in reality as article itself points out, it probably is not much use to non-serious WMD programs (and there are today 2 main threats - Iran and RPNK - and both are beyond where Iraq was).
But the NY Times has unwittingly LENT SUPPORT TO THE ORIGINAL CASSUS BELLI FOR REMOVING SADDAM HUSSEIN IN THE FIRST PLACE. THE WMD THREAT MAY HAVE BEEN LATENT AND NOT ACTIVE, BUT THE THREAT REMAINED AND WAS REAL. With both a loss of sanctions and the oil-for-bribes money, Saddam could have been on a quick ramp to nuclear weapons within years.
Broken-glass time, Republicans! Save the Congress!
From how I understand it the documents the NYT are talking about are reports written by the Iraqis to the United Nations inspectors about their nuclear program, not secret documents that they were trying to hide from them. That kind of explains why they still had them in 2003, but you would think the UN inspectors wouldn't have let them keep copies.