It is as simple as 1 - 2 - 3. Their case for Iraqi WMDs up in smoke, the Bush administration, at the prodding of conservative media and blogs, released a massive amount of documents seized in Iraq and released them on the web. The idea was that they would flood the zone with this material and give some sort of reasonable doubt to the last remaining WMD diehards. Most of the information was of a dubious nature, claimed contacts between Al Qaeda and Hussein’s third cousin twice removed that fulfill the fevered dreams of a few Republicans but mean nothing to anyone actually examining the evidence. These documents became very popular on conservative sites like FreeRepublic where the wingnuts would peruse documents for mentions of WMDs - no matter how shady their authenticity happened to be.
In their rush to muddy the waters, however, it appears that the Bush administration may have given rogue states like Iran access to information on how to build a nuclear bomb they never had before.
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 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.
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.
The Bush administration, in order to release propaganda and help its allies in the conservative media has apparently damaged our national security.
The interesting element is that Iraq was contained before the war, and these plans useful only on the desk of some Iraqi official - they couldn’t have built anything remotely nuclear if they tried. But thanks to the mad dash to justify the war in light of the WMD not being there, the GOP has given up this information to rogue states who really do have the capacity to make this stuff lethal.
UPDATE: Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris and a CIA veteran, spoke to NPR’s On The Media about the document dump a while back.
MICHAEL SCHEUER: You know, it’s very seldom in the history of America that we have recovered 48,000 boxes of documents from any country. I suspect that giving them a once-over shortchanges America’s national interests. In my career, at least, this is a very unprecedented move, and it certainly exposes a mass of documents to linguists of varying capabilities who will be looking either from the left or from the right to take advantage of them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: What do you think is actually in these documents that could pose a risk?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Well, I think certainly the fact that we don’t know what’s in these documents could pose a risk to the United States in several ways – first, in terms of embarrassment. Who knows, for example, if there’s going to be a memorandum of conversation from when Rumsfeld dealt with Saddam back in the ’80s? There could be information in those documents that would be operationally useful to the intelligence community in terms of stopping some sort of terrorist attack. There was a great deal of dealing between our allies — supposed allies in Europe and Saddam Hussein’s government commercial dealings — and I think the documents may expose those and cause even further rifts between NATO members.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, when you talk about embarrassment – say, for instance, an embarrassing moment between Rumsfeld and Saddam in the days when Saddam was a kind of ally - it says in the law that that material should not be held from public view solely on the grounds of embarrassment.
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Well, no, of course, it should not be held, but it should not also be discovered. It’s just a matter of the way you do business. This is just another example of the contempt that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and their colleagues have for the intelligence community. You know, this is not opposing it just for the sake of secrecy. It’s opposing the release of these documents to make sure that every bit of advantage for America can be extracted from them that should be extracted from them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well, clearly, somebody feels it’s in America’s interest. This has been a Republican-pushed release. Would there be some potential benefit for the Republicans?
MICHAEL SCHEUER: Oh, I think clearly there is, and we’ve already seen their mouthpiece, The Weekly Standard, has already run a couple of articles saying that this proves Saddam did X or did Y, without any [LAUGHING] real knowledge of how the new documents fit into the context of everything else we know. It’s just plain amateurishness – or they know what’s in these documents and they figure it can help them by releasing it.
Hmm- the New York Times just told us that Sadaam had a nuclear weapons program so advanced that they could have produced a weapon within a year and it was so well documented that it could help Iran (beyond it’s peaceful desire to generate electricity, of course)and perhaps other rogue states/entities. You mean Iraq was further ahead in their weapons program than Iran or North Korea? Wow- those plans must have been pretty advanced. Of course, there was no threat.
Very interesting. Oh- I’m sorry. Was this supposed to be a last minute election hit piece on Republicans?
“Wow- those plans must have been pretty advanced. Of course, there was no threat.”
You people can’t really read can you? The documents allegedly posted were of Iraq pre-Gulf War nuclear weapons program. Remember? The program that was shut down by the war, subsequent inspections and sanctions. In short, you’re a total idiot, Marty. Thanks for playing.
Rod Roddy, what’s his parting gift?
I don’t get it.
Bush is to blame for invading a country that supposedly had no WMD then posting the plans to build WMD that were found in the invaded country online?
Why would IraQ have plans to make WMD if there were none?
And just what was it that killed all those Kurds?
You mean Halabja? 15 years before we invaded? Sarin, mustard gas and Tabun that we either gave them or taught them to make, why?
How do people so unremittingly dense remember to breathe without the help of flash cards or personal assistants? What, do they have “in” tattooed on one hand and “out” on the other?
WE gave Hussein much of the technology that he used against the Kurds.
Hey, don’t I know that guy?
iNeXus, did you read the article, or what frameone said about it before? These plans were pre-1991. Saddam had a active nuclear program pre-1991. Afterwards he didn’t.
And the point of the article is: even if you believe these plans indicate that Saddam was still an imminent threat to go nuclear in 2002, thanks to the Bush administration every terrorist and dictator on earth with an internet connection is now just as much of a threat. There’s competence for you.
I just got banned after my first and only post at redstate for pointing this out. iNeXuS and Marty, you should thank your lucky stars that there are liberal sites like Oliver’s where you’re allowed to display your wingnut ignorance ad nauseam.
Anybody know of any decent right-wing sites where they’re not afraid of opposing ideas?
Would’nt this mean that Hoekstra and the wingnut candy-asses over at Pajamas Media get a 1 way flight to Gitmo?
Here’s to them. Hope ya look good in orange and do enjoy the lemon chicken.
The New York Times has become so dumbed-down that the venerable tabloid of fools tries an October/November surprise that backfires stupendously.
And blogs like this one don’t even realize it!
[url=http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/nyt-saddam-was-year-away-from-building.html]Gateway Pundit[/url] has a whole cartload of documents from the hoard which the NYT has selectively plucked a few anti-Bush leaflets, and demonstrated that the whole MSM agitprop campaign about Saddam having nothing to do with Al Qaeda is a raft of lies. And how does that true patriot elder statesman Wilson feel about his pronunciamento on the NYT Op-Ed page?
Indeed, things are going badly in Iraq, but the overall MSM take on Iraq is also a tendentious factitious pile of balderdash—one-sided and dishonest to its core.
The appeaser Dems are about ready to hijack the USS Free World and turn it into a multi-culti globalist welcome-wagon for terrorists.
Maybe there’s still time for turning the big ship around, but I doubt it.
DaveinHoeboca,
Listen.
Then think again before you comment.
The tanslated documents also confirm the relationship between Hussien and Al Qaeda, WMD’s, and nuclear weapons development.
Wow. Seems BusHitlerMcHaliburton was right after all. But you knew that all along.
Daveinboca, your overwrought, clownish writing style is a pretty good parody of R. Emmett Tyrell — or is it P.T. Barnum? Either way, well done!
Let me try: “It is well established that Messr. Saddam — that preposterous, preening potentate of Araby — has delivered over his nuclear arsenal to Bin Laden. Claims to the contary by the defeatist, diminished, decrepit multi-culti Democrats are rightly rejected as nought but tosh!”
“The tanslated documents also confirm the relationship between Hussien and Al Qaeda”
False.
“WMD’s and nuclear weapons development.”
Yes, before 1991. How is that relevant to our invasion? It’s not.
Jeezus f-ing Kreist. You wingers need to take some reading comprehension courses before you come in here talking trash. Of course your middling level of comprehension might explain why you continue to support Bush in spite of the absolute f-ing disaster he is.
For the last frickin time, why on Earth do conservatives continue to plow this inane idea that Democrats and liberals want to be horribly killed? That’s what it amounts to, after all, when they claim that we “want terrorists to win” and “want to let them into the country.”
Do these people seriously think that liberalism is so awesomely powerful a mindset that it even overrides the basic survival instinct?
“The New York Times has become so dumbed-down that the venerable tabloid of fools tries an October/November surprise that backfires stupendously.”
Um, Dave, why do you think this story is coming out now? Do you have any idea? Oh yes, because the “tabloid of fools” is trying to influence the elections with a last minute October/November surprise so the “appeaser Dems [can] hijack the USS Free World and turn it into a multi-culti globalist welcome-wagon for terrorists.”
Let me tell you the real reason this story is running now:
“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.”
Because it’s news that just happened.
What Bill says: “How do people so unremittingly dense remember to breathe without the help of flash cards or personal assistants?”
Wilbur said:
“iNeXus, did you read the article, or what frameone said about it before? These plans were pre-1991. Saddam had a active nuclear program pre-1991. Afterwards he didn’t.”
Whew . . . That makes me feel soo much safer. Silly me thinking that because he showed the ability to use these weapons in the past that he could also use them in the future.
I don’t know much about right wings but can someone tell me what it matters that we gave anything to IraQ in the past? So if I give you a baseball bat and then next week we get in an argument and you hit me over the head with it, I should look the other way or just ignore it?
This stuff is soo confusing.
Wow. These winguts really are dumb.
Israel bombed the Baghdad nuclear reactor in ‘81.
These documents were most likely left over from that program. The Gulf War finished off the rest of Saddam’s arsenal, and sanctions kept it in check. We had inspectors crawling all over Iraq. A nuclear program isn’t something that can be hidden in basement for christ’s sake.
Are these morons really retroactively justifying a war based on old pamphlets and dirty notebooks which relate to a program we already destroyed?
Sadly, yes.
In the NY Times zeal to drop another pre-election bomb, they may have just shot the donks in the foot.
I know the docs are not written in crayon with lots of pictures, but they show that in 2002 Saddam was close to having nukes. They also show that al-Qaeda was in the country and operating out of al-Anbar Province.
Another election cycle won by the GOP. You all may just want John Kerry back on the stump impugning our troops so that this info is not deciminated too widely…uh, too late.
Shorter Scott: screw everything you just said, my side is righteous and your side is evil and nothing that contradicts that mental construct I have built can be permitted to exist.
Not much shorter, mind you.
If Saddam was “close to having nukes” in 2002, why didn’t the inspectors find them?
Oh, wait, I know. Because the IAEA hates hates hates President Bush.
Then how come we haven’t found any of these nukes now that we occupy the country.
Oh, wait, I know. Because the WMDs themselves hate hate hate President Bush, so they dismantled themselves and ran away to make Bush look bad.
“… but they show that in 2002 Saddam was close to having nukes.”
No they don’t. They say that before the Gulf War Hussein had an active weapons program. That program was successfully shut down and contained by sanctions and inspections. What the Bush administration has done, at the insistence of right wing bloggers, is let the genie back out of the bottle by making what should have been classified weapons information public on the internet.
The fact that so much of the right wing nutosphere has leapt on this story as proof that Iraq was “close to having nukes in 2002″ only confirms the depths of dishonesty and idiocy that govern it.
This new group of cons remind me of people that think you can see the Virgin Mary in a potato chip, if you just look at it in the right way.
Intelligent people point and laugh though.
Nah, people who see the BVM in crisps are usually harmless. It’s the people who punch you repeatedly until you say you can see it too, even though it’s just a crisp, those are the guys running the free world right now.
By the way, looks like Drudge, who was running the story this morning at the top as a “flash”, has completely taken it down in favor of stories about Kanye West and a “lavish wedding” in Burma. Hilarious! They’re running scared — although hasn’t Condi tried to say this is evidence of a recent Iraq nuke program? Pathetic, if so.