Thursday, November 02, 2006

We gave them the nuke-making manuals so we can bomb them for having nuke-making materials.

Via Atrios, the NYT:
"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 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.

"Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

2 comments:

Steve Bates said...

...
"We'll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb!
Who's next, who's next, who's next?"

- Tom Lehrer

Somehow, I doubt that a lack of bomb-making instructions is a serious obstacle to today's nuclear-power wannabes. But this is just another example of Bush administration recklessness on security issues. Did they even think about the security ramifications of dumping this info to the web? Aw, c'mon... you tell me.

ellroon said...

Well...ah... uh...
They did fire gay Arabic/Farsi translators and silenced Sibel Edmonds for complaining. So who would tell them what all this ferrin stuff says anyway? And Saddam did destroy all his nuclear programs in compliance with demands, even though Rumsfeld and Cheney were counting on the fact he wouldn't.

So what could a few Iraqi notes about nuclear (sorry: nukular) equipment actually matter? All they learned, they learned from us....