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Saddam Closer To Bomb Than Anyone Thought

The New Yorks times confirms that in 2002 Saddam Hussein’s “scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away:”

    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.

Had the United States not eliminated this threat, today we would be facing a nuclear armed Iraq and possibly a nuclear armed Iran. Well, there is your talking point Tony Snow.

From National Review:

    I’m sorry, did the New York Times just put on the front page that IRAQ HAD A NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM AND WAS PLOTTING TO BUILD AN ATOMIC BOMB?

    What? Wait a minute. The entire mantra of the war critics has been “no WMDs, no WMDs, no threat, no threat”, for the past three years solid. Now we’re being told that the Bush administration erred by making public information that could help any nation build an atomic bomb.

    Let’s go back and clarify: IRAQ HAD NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANS SO ADVANCED AND DETAILED THAT ANY COUNTRY COULD HAVE USED THEM.

    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.

Blue Crab Boulevard

    Let me put this another way: You cannot simultaneously hold the position that Saddam did not have WMD programs and that he had advanced knowledge of nuclear weapons that would be of use to Iran. You cannot simultaneously believe Iran has a peaceful nuclear program and a need for advanced knowledge of nuclear weapons.

    This may be a surprise too far if it was intended to damage Bush.

Flopping Aces

    I find it funny the lengths the NYT’s will go to in trying to destroy the Bush Presidency, and then shooting themselves in the foot….I mean WHO are they to question the release of sensitive information?

Captain Ed has much more with an awesome post: Here is just a bit.

    This is apparently the Times’ November surprise, but it’s a surprising one indeed. The Times has just authenticated the entire collection of memos, some of which give very detailed accounts of Iraqi ties to terrorist organizations. Just this past Monday, I posted a memo which showed that the Saddam regime actively coordinated with Palestinian terrorists in the PFLP as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On September 20th, I reposted a translation of an IIS memo written four days after 9/11 that worried the US would discover Iraq’s ties to Osama bin Laden.

    It doesn’t end there with the Times, either. In a revelation buried far beneath the jump, the Times acknowledges that the UN also believed Saddam to be nearing development of nuclear weapons:

AJ Strata notes:

    That is why none of this information is critical to Iran. Clinton gave them the design to the hardest part of making a nuke - the trigger. He did it in 2000. Of course the NY Times fails to mention any of that. I guess to journalism majors, the material looked really complex and scary. I would wager nothing in these documents could not be found in college text books. We do train people to deal with nuclear reactors and weapons to some level. I have no problem with a review and double checkon the material - makes sense.

    But I guess the NY Times is also now admitting Iraq had WMD capabilities! I mean, if raq had designs helpful to Iran then Iraq was ahead of Iran in gaining a nuclear weapon. It is a good thing we grabbed this information before Saddam shared it with Iran and Al Qaeda.