Iraq and WMD verified by the New York Times
Betsy's Page
The New York Times has a big story about how the database that the government posted online contained information on the Iraqi plans to build a nuclear weapon. The whole tone of the piece is that the administration goofed big time by posting information that Iran could have used to build their own weapons.
<<< Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures. >>>
It does seem crazy to have posted some of this data, but the Times seems to have buried the big news of the story. These documents verify how close Saddam was to actually building a successful nuclear weapon.
<<< Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had 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. >>>
And not just nuclear weapons.
<<< Some of the first posted documents dealt with Iraq’s program to make germ weapons, followed by a wave of papers on chemical arms. >>>
Ed Morrissey has been a tiger on examining these documents. He posts on the New York Times story today and says,
<<< That appears to indicate that by invading in 2003, we followed the best intelligence of the UN inspectors to head off the development of an Iraqi nuke. This intelligence put Saddam far ahead of Iran in the nuclear pursuit, and made it much more urgent to take some definitive action against Saddam before he could build and deploy it. And bear in mind that this intelligence came from the UN, and not from the United States. The inspectors themselves developed it, and they meant to keep it secret. The FMSO site blew their cover, and they're very unhappy about it. >>>
Read the rest of Captain Ed for summaries and links to the other documents detailing Hussein's connections to terrorism and WMD.
Jim Geraghty has some of the same reaction that I had.
<<< 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. >>>
Perhaps it is time to revisit the part of the Duelfer Report which pertains here and which didn't get as much attention as the findings of no evidence of WMD in Iraq.
<<< The massive report does say, however, that Iraq worked hard to cheat on United Nations-imposed sanctions and retain the capability to resume production of weapons of mass destruction at some time in the future.
"[Saddam] wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted," a summary of the report says.
Duelfer, testifying at a Senate hearing on the report, said his account attempts to describe Iraq's weapons programs "not in isolation but in the context of the aims and objectives of the regime that created and used them." >>>
So, as the New York Times trumpets today, Iraq did have the know-how to make nuclear weapons and we know he certainly had the desire and will to do so. Would you really have preferred to have left it up to the UN corrupt sanctions program to forestall his actually developing those weapons and leasing them out to the terrorists he was supporting throughout the Middle East?
Michelle Malkin points to the irony of the Times which has trumpeted national security secrets suddenly worried about national security secrets being leaked.
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