NYT: Iraq Going Nuclear

Ostensibly to embarrass the administration, The New York Times reveals today that Iraq had detailed nuclear plans:

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.

This is Paragraph 16. Let's see what a lead paragraph says:

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.

Now wait just one, little minute. I thought that Iraq didn't have any nuclear ambitions. I thought "Bush lied and people died". Could it be possible that Bush didn't lie, after all?

• Captain Ed has been translating documents for ages. Here's his take.
• The Anchoress has a pretend conversation from over at The Times.
• Betsy has more.
• Michelle Malkin finds it humorous that the NYT suddenly cares about protecting secrets. She brings up a good point: Is this little admission designed to impugn the government so they can say, "Hey, the government revealed important stuff, too. Are you gonna sue them?"
• StoptheACLU has an excellent round-up. Everything you need is there. He pointed me to:
• AJStrata who notes that the Clinton admin gave Iran the most important nuclear technology. He says this:
  

  These media hits from the United Nations IAEA right before elections are getting to be tiresome. And someone should seriously investigate why the IAEA feels it can coordinate with the NY Times to influence our elections every damn year. Recall in 2004 they leaked the Al Qa Qaa weapons dump story right before those elections. It was the IAEA that broke the news about the Niger Forgeries right after Bush’s state of the Union speech in 2002 (forgeries which were in a safe in the CIA in Valerie Plame’s section for months until the speech). They meddle too much and can’t even do anything about Iran. I doubt the information was all that useful to Iran, because about building a bomb when he was President:

  The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book “State of War” by James Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush administration’s controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran’s nuclear drive.

  ….

  But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.

  The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA,” according to Risen.

  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.

So, The New York Times clearly wants to be the only ones with information so they can sift through it, eliminate what might be helpful to the administration and publish only the information that might be helpful to terrorists and rogue nations. I hope Hoekstra doesn't give up with on-line thing. No doubt more information is buried in there showing what a noble and pure leader Saddam Hussein was. We wouldn't want to miss that, would we?