November 03, 2006

Had enough?

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.

[snip]

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

[snip]

The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.

Now, I could be polite and say "well, this is just an example of unintended consequences." Or, I could be nasty and say "they were grasping for straws to justify their ill-thought out and mendacious reasons for war."

But I think I'll just ask the question "Are you feeling safer with these guys in charge?"

I thought not.

Posted by Linkmeister at November 3, 2006 12:58 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Oy dat.

Posted by: The Heretik at November 3, 2006 06:12 PM

I could be polite and not mention that a reading of the documents, whose authenticity the NYT does not dispute, show that the Iraqi regime's nuclear weapons program was very active right up to the time when it was overthrown.

Bush Lied? hmmmmmmm

Posted by: pixelshim at November 4, 2006 02:51 AM

From the WaPo yesterday:

"Intelligence officials said the documents do not indicate that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when President Bush ordered U.S. troops to take over the country and depose Saddam Hussein."

Posted by: Linkmeister at November 4, 2006 09:42 AM

I believe that the progtam in question applied to the secret nuclear weapons program, which had not yet produced a fissile device by the time of the regime's removal.

The point is that the world was indeed threatened by the bear certainty that the program would be successful, and sooner than the critics care to admit.

I was just commented on the irony of the NYT's report, which ignored the obvious.

Posted by: pixelshim at November 5, 2006 03:26 AM

Well, from the Duelfer report via Think Progress:

Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program. … Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.
Posted by: Linkmeister at November 5, 2006 08:13 AM