Reaction to the Times, reaction to me
TKS
Jim Geraghty reporting
11/03
A not terribly surprising roundup of reaction in my mailbag this morning. If you opposed the invasion of Iraq, you believe I'm a drooling moron, an imbicile, have no capacity for reading comprehension, and am a desperate hack willing to do anything to preserve the power of Dennis Hastert. (I'd like to introduce those readers to the ones who thought I was on a cruel, mean-spirited and fundamentally unfair jihad against Dennis Hastert, oh, about two weeks ago.)
If you supported the invasion of Iraq, you think I've nailed it, this is huge, etc. Generally, these readers' biggest concern is how it will be spun, whether the voters at large will hear it, etc.
There are those who contend that in the sentences...
<<< 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. >>>
...the term "at the time" means before the Persian Gulf War, despite the fact that the previous sentence refers to a) the 1990s and b) in 2002. (It would also help if we had some idea who these "experts" are.) But let's presume that this research was completed in 1990.
So these "charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building" are devised in 1990, and are then sitting in some file cabinet in an Iraqi government installation, with the Iraqis have absolutely no intention of ever using them ever. And the war opponents are willing to state, with 100 percent certainty, that Iraq would not have attempted to use all this - which was useful enough to put them a year away from completion. Not that the New York Times writers feel any obligation for clarity in their writing, but let's presume the "one year away" statement refers to 1991, the time of the first Persian Gulf war. Even when the sanctions ended, even with lousy enforcement of the sanctions, the leaky borders, the corruption of the oil for food program, we are asked to believe that no one in power in Iraq - not Saddam, not Uday, not Qusay - was ever going to try to use this to get a nuclear weapon.
Furthermore, we are asked to believe that these "charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building," in the hands of the Iraqi regime, was never, ever, ever going to end up in the hands of another regime, or in the hands of non-state actors hostile to the United States. I mean, it's not like the world has people like A.Q. Khan, out to sell everything they know and everything they can get their hands on to anyone willing to buy.
Remember, we are told that the war planners were way too optimistic, that they didn't plan for the postwar chaos, that they looked at the future through rose-colored glasses and didn't foresee what could go wrong, the worst-case scenario.
Yet we are also told that this information was harmless to the United States in the hands of Saddam's regime.
And now we're also supposed to believe that the information is obviously now in the hands of the Iranians, who have been working on their nuclear program for decades, and who have dealt extensively with the North Koreans, and who also were a major client of A.Q. Khan's:
<<< Khan, a hero in Pakistan as the "Father of the Bomb", and his associates sold nuclear codes, materials, components and plans that left his "signature" at the core of the Iranian nuclear programme. >>>
Maybe these documents would have been of use to the Iranians, but don't they seem fairly far down the road, if they've already acquired "codes, materials, components and plans" years ago?
I also note Spruiell's take:
<<< If these documents were as dangerous as the Times and its experts claim they are, why didn't the intelligence officials responsible for posting them recognize that and redact them? From the way the Times describes intelligence officials as lacking enthusiasm for this project to begin with, it sounds to me like they had a job they didn't want to do and half-assed it. How is that Pete Hoekstra's fault? >>>
I predict the following update to the Times story:
<<< "Republicans never should have trusted government employees to do the job properly and with diligence and awareness of what could go wrong," said Speaker-in-Waiting, Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, while measuring drapes. "As Democrats, we have always exercised the proper skeptism about the effectiveness of a large federal bureaucracy to handle a problem without making mistakes, and have always been on the lookout for unintended consequences." >>>
tks.nationalreview.com
telegraph.co.uk
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