New York Times: Saddam’s nuclear weapons plans were a major threat

The New York Times reports today that Saddam Hussein’s regime had kept enough information on nuclear weapons technology to start a Middle East arms race.

In other words, there was a big reason, other than freeing 25 million people from fascist repression, for toppling Saddam’s regime in 2003 and then democratizing Iraq.

Of course, that’s not how The Times is presenting this news. The Times presents it as a political campaign ad:

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.

Do you suppose some Democrats work at The New York Times?

Aided Iran? The Times is saying that, in posting the documents seized from Saddam’s bureaucracy, the Bush administration accidentally disclosed Saddam’s nuclear arms blueprints, and those documents may have aided Iran’s nuclear program (though there’s no evidence of that).

As if Iran didn’t get enough of its nuclear weapons plans from the black market of Pakistani scientist-to-the-tyrants A.Q. Khan. As if Iran hasn’t been working on its uranium enrichment plant full-time since about 1995. The Iranians just found the plans? Come on.

For nations with money, plans no longer are the problem in atomic bomb construction. The problem is producing the right grade of uranium or plutonium.

Sought uranium? As Jim Geraghty observes today:

They would have needed something like... um... you know... what’s that stuff called? Oh, that’s right.

Yellowcake.

But we know Iraq would never make an effort to get yellowcake. Joe Wilson had tea with officials in Niger who said so.

Allahpundit also asks:

Why is the IAEA worried about Iran using bombmaking information in their “peaceful nuclear energy program”?

Captain’s Quarters wonders if The Times’ sudden interest in the Saddam archives means The Times also has verified the documents indicating that Saddam late in his reign still had active chemical and biological weapons programs, and had contacts with al-Qaida.

Imminent threat? The whole thing is frightening in retrospect. If, as The Times reports so objectively, Saddam had plans so advanced that they would aid someone else’s existing atomic program, then Saddam surely must have been closer to building a bomb than we ever thought.

The Bush administration released those Saddam-era documents to help us build a full historical record of Iraqi fascism. Apparently, The Times looked long and hard to find something wrong with the Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal.

The Times found a physicist who labeled Saddam’s atomic-weapons documents “very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly secret restricted data.”

The irony. Since when did The Times care about the publication of secret restricted data?

Frank Warner

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See also: Exit interview: 14 questions no one asked President Bush.

See also: The two last straws: No reason left to trust The New York Times.