[LikeLight]

Umm, no. It's a poorly written paragraph of the article...

Another botched joke incident? How likely is that?

[Strategerist]

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's blatantly obvious to me from context, and also from the context of the entire article, that when they say "on the verge" they mean before Gulf War I, not 2002. It's that one of the reports that the Iraqis made about the 1991 program was from 2002.

However, I've had little succces previously on FR from keeping people from living in hopeful fantasyworlds, and I don't think I'm going to have much success in this one either.