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Thursday, November 02, 2006

New York Times Planning November Surprise

From Drudge:

NEW YORK TIMES PLANS EXCLUSIVE STORY ON IRAQ AND RESEARCH OF NUKE BOMB… NEWSROOM SOURCE TELLS DRUDGE: ‘IT WILL LEAD THE PAPER ON FRIDAY… IT SHOULD IGNITE NEWS CYCLES’… DEVELOPING…

So...they’re finally going to point out the fact that Joe Wilson is a dirty liar and that Saddam really was using oil-for-food money from the UN to bribe his way out from under international sanctions and jump-start a nuclear weapons program?

I wouldn’t count on it.  Instead, expect it to be some long-winded narrative about alleged Bush administration failures, all of which will have been covered at-length before but will this time contain new angles and quotes.

Because it’s important that a story like that run right before an election.

Update: Drudge has more now, and it looks like the Times is going to accuse the Bush administration of helping Iran go nuclear:

Federal government set up Web site—Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal—to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war; detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research; a ‘basic guide to building an atom bomb’… Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency fear the information could help Iran develop nuclear arms… contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that the nuclear experts say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums…

Here’s the Times headline for tomorrow: US Helps Iran Get The Bomb.

Well, maybe it won’t be that bad, but probably not by much.

But regardless, this brings up some interesting points:

First, this database of Iraqi documents has been out for quite some time.  Since March of this year.  Since they’ve been released there has been numerous interesting revelations, from Saddam’s connections with al Qaeda to his establishment of an international terror network of his own to his dealings with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  Yet out of all that information (much of it very supportive of the President’s decision to invade Iraq), this is the first “exclusive” the Times has chosen to run on the database, and they’ve picked a negative topic to cover right before an election.

I wonder how long the Times sat on this story?  You know the timing isn’t an accident.  This data has been out for almost eight months already.

Second, isn’t the fact that Saddam had such detailed plans for nuclear technology in his files - evidence that Iran apparently hasn’t been able to get its hands on yet - more support for the President’s decision to invade Iraq?  Certainly the Times won’t be reporting it that way, but for me that’s the real story in all of this.

Update: Here’s the Times article.

It’s about what I expected.  It blames the Bush administration/Republicans for making detailed information on nuclear weapons publicly available.  It totally skirts the fact that:

  1. These released documents have revealed numerous ties between Saddam’s regime and terrorism.
  2. If Iraq had information on nuclear weapons that Iran hasn’t been able to get yet then that’s more support for the President’s case for war in Iraq.

And then there still lingers the question of why this article about documents that have been publicly available for eight months is just breaking now right before a crucial midterm election.

Which is a rhetorical question, of course.  We know why it broke right before the election.  The Times is a completely partisan organization, and this is the final bid to get the Dems in on the 7th.

Comments

Without having seen the document, it’s hard to tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a translation ofthe Los Alamos primer on bomb building, which by the way is declassified.  The LANL guide doesn’t tell you anything really useful, it just collects the unclassified pieces together.  Most of what I know about bomb design comes from this source (besides the basic nuclear physics of course, which I learned in college).  Anyway, the LANL primer is pretty useful, it allows you to reality check what you are hearing in the press.

Actually though, expect some blow-back from the story...my first reaction was, so the Bush administration was right—Saddam really was trying to build a bomb!  (I figured this was the case, but this document at face value strongly supports that supposition.)

Carrick on November 2, 2006 at 07:00 pm
Avatar for WOOF

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

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.

What Were They Thinking?
WOOF on November 2, 2006 at 08:31 pm

The NYT pulled a Kerry here.

In the midst of their article they put the lie to their consistent story of Iraqi WMD programs being bogus:

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.

Yep.  Seems they were years away from nuclear weapons, until they were only a year away… Or perhaps that was a joke…

And woof, along with the editors of the New York Times, has obviously never heard of A. Q. Khahn.

Out Here
Rodney Graves


Out Here
Rodney G. Graves

Ceterum censeo Parthia esse delendam
Latin: “Furthermore, Parthia (Persia aka modern day Iran) should be destroyed.”

Rodney Graves on November 2, 2006 at 08:36 pm
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The irony here, is the claim that “Saddam wasn’t building nukes, but publishing what he was doing will help Iran build theirs!



Barack Obama: All hat and no cattle since 1997!


Proof on November 3, 2006 at 03:12 am

Yeah, WOOF.  What were they thinking? 

You lefties have been telling us that Iraq didn’t pose any danger, and we shouldn’t have invaded.  Now that the NY Times has decided to run an 8-month old story right before the elections, they have basically cut you lefties off at the knees.

What were they thinking???

Carrick on November 3, 2006 at 03:35 am

From Ace:

Iraq had advanced plans to build a bomb (but it was no threat to build a bomb!) and Bush is horrible because he let those plans be posted on line, which Iran may use to build a bomb (but we also don’t have to worry about them building a bomb, so don’t get any tricky ideas about bombing them!).

Short form, “why many of us think the anti-war left is intellectually bankrupt.”

H/T Kim @ Wizbang/

Carrick on November 3, 2006 at 03:46 am
Avatar for HG

How to spin Sadaam’s nuclear ambitions and plans as America’s fault.

This is truly the best the leftie mind can do for our war effort.  At least they admit that Sadaam had nuclear plans that we Americans now know clearly posed a serious threat given Sadaam’s connections with terrorists.  But blaming America for posting information about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities?  The left and especially the MSM has been demanding proof of such claims made by this Administration ever since Sadaam was defeated.  Wasn’t Wilson’s trip to S. Africa proof Iraq wasn’t trying to build a nuke?  Wasn’t this proof Bush lied?  These Libs are sick, sick people.

HG on November 3, 2006 at 06:54 am
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