Iraq's Nuclear Program

[Jeff C.]

http://tks.nationalreview.com/post/?...QzZDczZWU5N2Y=

Shocker: New York Times Confirms Iraqi Nuclear Weapons Program
Quote: "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 atomic bomb, as little as a year away."

There is a link to the NYT article within the above article.

So, Pres. Bush was a "liar" about Iraq having a nuclear weapons program. Now Bush is an "idiot" for posting these Iraqi documents on the internet. Which is it? How can he possibly be both???

Jeff Cook

[Tony Dismukes]

Jeff, if you read the entire NYT article it appears that "at the time" refers to 1991, not 2002. It was already known that Iraq had an advanced nuclear program before the first Iraq war in 1991. However that program was destroyed at the time and not re-created due to inspections and sanctions.

I agree that the passage you quoted is ambiguous, but the context of the rest of the article clarifies the time frame they were referring to.

[Patrick Hayes]

So, Pres. Bush was a "liar" about Iraq having a nuclear weapons program. Now Bush is an "idiot" for posting these Iraqi documents on the internet. Which is it? How can he possibly be both???

He's a talented man, I'm sure he can manage both.

[aplonis]

Iraq had a pair of reactors about which it was speculated they would use to foster their nuculear program. If memory serves, that all came to an end when Isreal blasted them to smithereens in an air attack. This was considerably before the much more recent US invasion and subsequent, continuing occupation of Iraq.

Gan Uesli Starling
Kalamazoo MI

[Erik]

Iraq had a pair of reactors about which it was speculated they would use to foster their nuculear program. If memory serves, that all came to an end when Isreal blasted them to smithereens in an air attack. This was considerably before the much more recent US invasion and subsequent, continuing occupation of Iraq.

Gan Uesli Starling
Kalamazoo MI

1981, Osirak, I think.

They used the F16 for the first time in combat, if I recall. Maybe it was the F15.

Anyway, the plane flew straight enough....

[Jeff C.]

Tony, they had the know-how and the means to produce a nuclear weapon, and they were concealing that fact. The documents were captured/discovered, not handed over voluntarily. "In the 1990's and 2002" seems pretty clear to me. If they were so innocent of all of this hanky-panky, why were they desperately hanging onto their secrets?

Jeff Cook

[Tony Dismukes]

In the 1990's and 2002" seems pretty clear to me.

From the second paragraph of the article: "detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war."

The excerpt you yourself posted reads: "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."

In other words, the nuclear research wasn't being carried out in the 1990s and 2002, the reports were being written for the U.N. inspectors in that time period.

Now if the documents that weapons experts are concerned about are the same as the documents referenced in your quoted excerpt, that would be evidence that the Iraqis were not concealing the fact of their former closeness to nuclear capability. There's enough ambiguity in the article that we can't conclude that for sure, however.

In any case, we knew that Iraq was getting close to nuclear capability prior to 1991. That's why we had the weapons inspectors there in the first place, to make sure their nuclear program was dismantled.

Now Bush is an "idiot" for posting these Iraqi documents on the internet.

Actually, I don't believe it was Bush's idea. The administration went along with pressure from the Republican congressional leadership, notably Pete Hoekstra. Hoekstra's idea was that public scrutiny would allow the discovery of new information in data that the intelligence agencies didn't have time to fully analyze. Of course, there are apparently some hazards involved with publicly releasing raw intelligence data before the appropriate intelligence agencies have a chance to properly examine it.

[Jeff C.]

I have to admit Tony your explanation/analysis does sound reasonable. Maybe it's time I too don the tinfoil hat. I think I am being affected by all of the political spam phone calls and flyers....

Do you think there is nothing to this story and it is getting spun by the right-wing machine?

Jeff Cook

[Erik]

I have to admit Tony your explanation/analysis does sound reasonable. Maybe it's time I too don the tinfoil hat. I think I am being affected by all of the political spam phone calls and flyers....

Do you think there is nothing to this story and it is getting spun by the right-wing machine?

Jeff Cook

I think the best way to get to the facts is for guys like you and Tony to debate it out exactly as you're doing.

Silly as it may sound, you two are exemplifying democracy as it should be.

Carry on - you're doing great!

[Tony Dismukes]

Do you think there is nothing to this story and it is getting spun by the right-wing machine?

I think the only real story is that whoever was supposed to vet the documents before they were released to the public didn't do a proper job. But since when is government incompetence news?

If we really had found any evidence that Iraq still had a functional nuclear program shortly before the invasion, you can bet that the news would be trumpeted to the sky by the Bush administration, not just right-wing bloggers.


I have a few methods I use to try cutting through the partisan spin from either the left or the right.

One step is to try to check out original source material in preference to the interpretation of pundits. In this case I read the NYT article through a couple of times to make sure I understood what they were trying to say. I could have looked for the original documents the article was referring to, but I guess they've now been taken offline.

Another step is to check out the competing claims of partisans from the left and right in much the same way I might listen to the lawyers on both sides of a court case and see who I think makes the best supported argument. You wouldn't want to decide a court case having heard just from the plaintiff or just the defendent. If you're lucky, each side will do a good job of pointing out the holes in each others arguments

[Abbax8]

More news, only it's Iran.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15712210/

Peace

Dennis

[David Craik]

I tend to view with suspicion articles written with that many all-caps words and boldface within the body of the text.

So, when are we invading Pakistan and India?