[Rhodes22-list] Politics - WMD

[Herb Parsons]

"The Bush administration got the United States into this war by claiming

Iraq had actually built nuclear weapons:"

Bill, please. Spare us. Cite source. I don't think you can't. Bill said
Hillary said Dean said someone else said Bush lied doesn't count.

When I read a post from you that starts out with such a blatant
falsehood, I stop reading at that point. In other words, nothing of
value in a dissertation that starts with a lie.


Herb Parsons

S/V O'Jure
1976 O'Day 25
Lake Grapevine, N TX

S/V Reve de Papa
1971 Coronado 35
Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana Coast 

>>> bill at effros.com 11/3/2006 9:25:30 am >>>
Brad,

Getting desperate, are we?

The Bush administration got the United States into this war by claiming

Iraq had actually built nuclear weapons:

"We do know, with absolute certainty,
that he is using his procurement system
to acquire the equipment he needs
in order to enrich uranium to
build a nuclear weapon."

Dick Cheney
Vice President
September 8, 2002

and

"We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted
nuclear weapons."

Dick Cheney
Vice President
March 16, 2003

The documents referenced in the New York Times were posted on the web
by 
the Bush Administration in an effort by Republicans to flush out more 
documents to support administration claims.

The documents posted were all captured during the 1991 Gulf war.  No
one 
said Iraq wasn't trying to build WMD prior to the first gulf war.  It 
was the current administration that claimed Iraq had actually built 
nuclear weapons after the first Gulf war, and that the United States
had 
to invade Iraq in order to find them.

There has not been one shred of evidence to support administration 
claims that Iraq tried to build nuclear weapons between 1991 and 2003.

The point of the Times story was that this administration, which is now

running on a "we can protect America better" platform, is posting plans

for building nuclear weapons on the Internet in a last ditch effort to

try to justify false claims that Iraq was building nuclear weapons just

prior to our invasion.

Now Republicans are trying to claim that documents they posted, which 
detail how to build atomic bombs, refer to Iraqi attempts to build 
weapons after 1991.

You guys must think everyone else is really stupid.

Bill Effros






Brad Haslett wrote:
> You gotta love the intelligentsia at the New York Times.  No doubt, 
> this was
> supposed to be a hit piece on the Bush Administration.  Perhaps they
> outwitted themselves?  An analysis and the original article from
today's
> newspaper is attached.
>
> Brad
>
> ---------------------
>
> *Shocker: New York Times Confirms Iraqi Nuclear Weapons Program
> *11/02 10:39 
>
PM<http://tks.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTJjYzYzYmMwNjY3N2YwNWE5NDQ3ZTQzZDczZWU5N2Y=>

>
> When
> I saw the headline on Drudge earlier tonight, that the New York Times

> had a
> big story coming out tomorrow that had something to do with Iraq and

> WMDs, I
> was ready for an October November Surprise.
>
> Well, Drudge <http://www.drudgereport.com/> is giving us the scoop. 
> And if
> it's meant to be a slam-Bush story, I think the Times team may have
> overthunk this:
>
> *U.S. POSTING OF IRAQ NUKE DOCS ON WEB COULD HAVE HELPED IRAN...
>
> NYT REPORTING FRIDAY, SOURCES SAY: Federal government set up Web
site
> * **Operation
> Iraqi Freedom Document
>
Portal*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Iraqi_Freedom_documents>
> * * to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured
during the
> war; detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research; a 'basic 
> guide to
> building an atom bomb'... Officials of the International Atomic
Energy
> Agency fear the information could help Iran develop nuclear arms... 
> contain
> charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb
building 
> that
> the nuclear experts say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the
> Internet and in other public forums...
>
> Website now shut... Developing... *
>
> 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.
>
> UPDATE: The article is up
>
here<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?ei=5094&en=1511d6b3da302d4f&hp=&ex=1162530000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print>

>
> .
>
> Having now read it, I can see that every stop has been pulled out to

> ensure
> that a reader will believe that posting these documents was a
strategic
> blunder of the first order.
>
> But the story retains its own inherent contradiction: The information
in
> these documents is so dangerous, that every step must be taken to 
> ensure it
> doesn't end up in the wrong hands... except for topping the regime
that
> actually has the documents.
>
> (By the way, is it just me, or is the article entirely devoid of any
> indication that Iran actually accessed the documents? This threat 
> that, "You
> idiot! Iran could access all the documents!" is entirely speculative.

> If the
> government servers hosting the web site have signs that Iranian web 
> browsers
> accessed those pages, it's a different story; my guess is somebody 
> already
> knows the answer to that question.)
>
> I'm still kinda blown away by this paragraph:
>
> 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.*
>
> Is this sentence referring to 1990, before the Persian Gulf War? Or
2002,
> months before the invasion of Iraq? Because "Iraq is a year away
from
> building a nuclear bomb" was supposed to be a myth, a lie that Bush 
> used to
> trick us into war.
>
> And yet here is the New York Times, saying that Iraq had a "how to 
> manual"
> on how to build a nuclear bomb, and could have had a nuke in a year.
>
> In other news, it's good to see that the New York Times is firmly
against
> publicizing sensitive and classified information. Unless, of course,

> they're
> the ones doing it.
>
> ONE LAST THOUGHT: So Iraq had all the know-how, all the plans, all
the
> designs, "charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about
bomb
> building." Unless they were keeping these documents around as future
> material for paper airplanes, all this stuff constituted a plan of
action
> for some point in the future; but to complete creating these weapons,

> they
> would have needed stuff. I don't know an exact list of what they
would 
> have
> needed, but articles like this
>
one<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_id=3597&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3597>give

>
> a good idea. Sounds like you need a firing mechanism (the right kind
> of
> firearm would suffice), some fairly common industrial equipment like
a
> lathe, material for the bomb casing, some fairly common conventional
> explosives, all of which would have been easy to get in Iraq. Oh,
and, of
> course, the nuclear material itself.
>
> 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.
>
> ---------
> November 3, 2006
> U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer
>
> By WILLIAM J. 
>
BROAD<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/william_j_broad/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

>
>
> 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<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org>who

>
> had said they hoped to "leverage the Internet" to find new evidence
of
> the prewar dangers posed by Saddam
>
Hussein<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/saddam_hussein/index.html?inline=nyt-per>.

>
>
>
> But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons

> experts
> say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of
>
Iraq<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>'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."
>
> Officials of the International Atomic Energy
>
Agency<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/international_atomic_energy_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,

>
> 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.
>
> Early this morning, a spokesman for Gregory L. Schulte, the American
> ambassador, denied that anyone from the agency had approached Mr.
Schulte
> about the Web site.
>
> The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams,
> equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear
experts
> who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on
the
> Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give 
> detailed
> information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering
> explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
>
> "For the U.S. to toss a match into this flammable area is very
> irresponsible," said A. Bryan Siebert, a former director of 
> classification
> at the federal Department of Energy, which runs the nation's nuclear
arms
> program. "There's a lot of things about nuclear weapons that are 
> secret and
> should remain so."
>
> The government had received earlier warnings about the contents of
the 
> Web
> site. Last spring, after the site began posting old Iraqi documents
about
> chemical weapons, United
>
Nations<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>arms-control

>
> officials in New York won the withdrawal of a report that gave
> information on how to make tabun and sarin, nerve agents that kill
by
> causing respiratory failure.
>
> The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative 
> publications
> and politicians, who said that the nation's spy agencies had failed
> adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the

> March
> 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the
rationale
> and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate
intelligence
> committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents

> * most
> of them in Arabic * would reinvigorate the search for clues that
Mr. 
> Hussein
> had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the
> invasion. American search teams never found such evidence.
>
> The director of national intelligence, John D.
>
Negroponte<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/john_d_negroponte/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,

>
> had resisted setting up the Web site, which some intelligence 
> officials felt
> implicitly raised questions about the competence and judgment of 
> government
> analysts. But President Bush approved the site's creation after
> Congressional Republicans proposed legislation to force the
documents'
> release.
>
> In his statement last night, Mr. Negroponte's spokesman, Chad Kolton,

> said,
> "While strict criteria had already been established to govern posted
> documents, the material currently on the Web site, as well as the 
> procedures
> used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the
site
> becomes available again."
>
> A spokesman for the National Security
>
Council<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,

>
> Gordon D. Johndroe, said, "We're confident the D.N.I. is taking the
> appropriate steps to maintain the balance between public information
and
> national security."
>
> The Web site, "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal," was a
constantly
> expanding portrait of prewar Iraq. Its many thousands of documents 
> included
> everything from a collection of religious and nationalistic poetry
to
> instructions for the repair of parachutes to handwritten notes from
Mr.
> Hussein's intelligence service. It became a popular quarry for a 
> legion of
> bloggers, translators and amateur historians.
>
> 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.
>
> European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear
documents on
> the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United
Nations
> Security 
>
Council<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/security_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in

>
> late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on
> the
> Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been
extensively
> edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms.
>
> The deletions, the diplomats said, had been done in consultation with
the
> United States and other nuclear-weapons nations. Mohamed
>
ElBaradei<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/mohamed_elbaradei/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,

>
> the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which ran
the
> nuclear part of the inspections, told the Security Council in late 
> 2002 that
> the deletions were "consistent with the principle that
> proliferation-sensitive information should not be released."
>
> In Europe, a senior diplomat said atomic experts there had studied
the
> nuclear documents on the Web site and judged their public release as
> potentially dangerous. "It's a cookbook," said the diplomat, who
spoke on
> condition of anonymity because of his agency's rules. "If you had 
> this, it
> would short-circuit a lot of things."
>
> The New York Times had examined dozens of the documents and asked a
half
> dozen nuclear experts to evaluate some of them.
>
> Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist and former United States government
arms
> scientist now at the war studies department of King's College,
London,
> called the posted material "very sensitive, much of it undoubtedly
secret
> restricted data."
>
> Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore 
> National
>
Laboratory<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/lawrence_livermore_national_laboratory/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in

>
> California, an arms design center, said "some things in these
> documents
> would be helpful" to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and

> should
> have remained secret.
>
> A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with
atomic
> issues said the documents showed "where the Iraqis failed and how to
get
> around the failures." The documents, he added, could perhaps help
Iran or
> other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but 
> probably
> not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who
requested
> anonymity because of his agency's rules against public comment,
called 
> the
> papers "a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but 
> only if
> you already have a car."
>
> Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a
private
> group at George Washington
>
University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/george_washington_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>that

>
> tracks federal secrecy decisions, said the impetus for the Web
site's
> creation came from an array of sources * private conservative
groups,
> Congressional Republicans and some figures in the Bush administration

> * who
> clung to the belief that close examination of the captured documents

> would
> show that Mr. Hussein's government had clandestinely reconstituted
an
> unconventional arms programs.
>
> "There were hundreds of people who said, 'There's got to be gold in
them
> thar hills,' " Mr. Blanton said.
>
> The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House
> Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan.
Last
> November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, wrote

> to Mr.
> Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material. The sheer volume
of 
> the
> documents, they argued, had overwhelmed the intelligence community.
>
> Some intelligence officials feared that individual documents, 
> translated and
> interpreted by amateurs, would be used out of context to second-guess
the
> intelligence agencies' view that Mr. Hussein did not have
unconventional
> weapons or substantive ties to Al
>
Qaeda<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.

>
> Reviewing the documents for release would add an unnecessary burden
on 
> busy
> intelligence analysts, they argued.
>
> On March 16, after the documents' release was approved, Mr.
Negroponte's
> office issued a terse public announcement including a disclaimer
that
> remained on the Web site: "The U.S. government has made no
determination
> regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual 
> accuracy of
> the information contained therein, or the quality of any
translations, 
> when
> available."
>
> On April 18, about a month after the first documents were made
public, 
> Mr.
> Hoekstra issued a news release acknowledging "minimal risks," but 
> saying the
> site "will enable us to better understand information such as
Saddam's 
> links
> to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and violence against the
Iraqi
> people." He added: "It will allow us to leverage the Internet to
enable a
> mass examination as opposed to limiting it to a few exclusive
elites."
>
> Yesterday, before the site was shut down, Jamal Ware, a spokesman for
Mr.
> Hoekstra, said the government had "developed a sound process to
review 
> the
> documents to ensure sensitive or dangerous information is not
posted."
> Later, he said the complaints about the site "didn't sound like a big

> deal,"
> adding, "We were a little surprised when they pulled the plug."
>
> The precise review process that led to the posting of the nuclear
and
> chemical-weapons documents is unclear. But in testimony before 
> Congress last
> spring, a senior official from Mr. Negroponte's office, Daniel
Butler,
> described a "triage" system used to sort out material that should
remain
> classified. Even so, he said, the policy was to "be biased towards 
> release
> if at all possible." Government officials say all the documents in
Arabic
> have received at least a quick review by Arabic linguists.
>
> Some of the first posted documents dealt with Iraq's program to make
germ
> weapons, followed by a wave of papers on chemical arms.
>
> At the United Nations in New York, the chemical papers raised alarms

> at the
> Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which had been in

> charge
> of searching Iraq for all unconventional arms, save the nuclear
ones.
>
> In April, diplomats said, the commission's acting chief weapons 
> inspector,
> Demetrius Perricos, lodged an objection with the United States
mission to
> the United Nations over the document that dealt with the nerve agents

> tabun
> and sarin.
>
> Soon, the document vanished from the Web site. On June 8, diplomats
said,
> Mr. Perricos told the Security Council of how risky arms information
had
> shown up on a public Web site and how his agency appreciated the
American
> cooperation in resolving the matter.
>
> In September, the Web site began posting the nuclear documents, and
some
> soon raised concerns. On Sept. 12, it posted a document it called 
> "Progress
> of Iraqi nuclear program circa 1995." That description is
potentially
> misleading since the research occurred years earlier.
>
> The Iraqi document is marked "Draft FFCD Version 3 (20.12.95)," 
> meaning it
> was preparatory for the "Full, Final, Complete Disclosure" that Iraq

> made to
> United Nations inspectors in March 1996. The document carries three 
> diagrams
> showing cross sections of bomb cores, and their diameters.
>
> On Sept. 20, the site posted a much larger document, "Summary of 
> technical
> achievements of Iraq's former nuclear program." It runs to 51 pages,
18
> focusing on the development of Iraq's bomb design. Topics included 
> physical
> theory, the atomic core and high-explosive experiments. By early
October,
> diplomats and officials said, United Nations arms inspectors in New 
> York and
> their counterparts in Vienna were alarmed and discussing what to do.
>
> Last week in Vienna, Olli J. Heinonen, head of safeguards at the
> international atomic agency, expressed concern about the documents to
Mr.
> Schulte, diplomats said.
>
> Scott Shane contributed reporting.
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list 
>
__________________________________________________
Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list