New York Times justified invasion of Iraq!

[Yonivore]

This is a NY Times November bombshell as designed by the North Koreans.

The breaking article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?ei=5065&en=9b92b000e0a064e6&ex=1163134800&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print) seems to be an attempt to attack the Bush Administration for releasing potentially classified information (yes, the ironymeter is pegged), but what they actually prove is that Saddam's nuclear weapons program was indeed a significant threat.

Not only were they close to developing their own nuclear bomb (at one point the Iraqis "were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away"), they also had that nucelar weapon building knowledge available to proliferate to other rogue states.

The Times may have set out to attack Bush, but instead, they have justified the rationale for the 2003 invasion.

Thanks, Pinch, this is a pretty significant revelation.

However, perhaps even more significant is that the NYTimes apparently regards the documents that bloggers have been translating for months as reliable, which means that reports of Iraqi intelligence's relations with Osama bin Laden, and "friendly" Western press agencies, are presumably also reliable.

And as these documents are "presumably also reliable," then much of the research into these documents done by a former Defense Intelligence Agency contractor by the name of Ray Robinson is certainly worth a second or even a third look. Robinson compiled some of his research for the Fox News Saddam Dossier (http://www.foxnews.com/column_archive/0,2976,146,00.html), and has much more in the archives of his personal site (http://rayrobison.typepad.com/ray_robison/).

Robinson thinks he may have even triggered this by contacting the IAEA two weeks ago (http://rayrobison.typepad.com/ray_robison/2006/11/nyt_article_on_.html).

[clambake]

1991

[boutons_]

Yoni's still grasping, defending his boy, one the shittiest, most ignorant, most inexperienced, most incompetent assholes ever to be called president.

Where were all these nuclear bomb making materials in April/May 2003?
Exactly, they didn't exist.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Yoni's still grasping, defending his boy, one the shittiest, most ignorant, most inexperienced, most incompetent assholes ever to be called president.

Where were all these nuclear bomb making materials in April/May 2003?
Exactly, they didn't exist.


No Yoni has now stated that the NY TImes can be trusted as a reliable source..Everyone needs to remember so we can remind him everytime we hear him complaion about the same NY Times

[Yonivore]

No Yoni has now stated that the NY TImes can be trusted as a reliable source..Everyone needs to remember so we can remind him everytime we hear him complaion about the same NY Times
Only when they quote reliable sources.

[clambake]

1991

[Oh, Gee!!]

I don't think Yoni actually read the article.

[Yonivore]

I don't think Yoni actually read the article.
No, I did. But, I don't think the New York Times realizes they countered years of saying Bush lied about WMD's in Iraq with their own story.

[Oh, Gee!!]

No, I did. But, I don't think the New York Times realizes they countered years of saying Bush lied about WMD's in Iraq with their own story.


no they (the documents) don't really.

[Yonivore]

no they don't really.

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.

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, 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.
If Iran, said to be only a short distance from creating its own weapon, could benefit from information that Saddam's Iraq possessed, that necessarily means Saddam's regime was far along the road to seeking a nuclear weapon. Otherwise Iran could not benefit from Saddam's technological base, were it nonexistent or underdeveloped as a threat. You can't get money from an empty till. So either Iraqi nuclear technology existed to the point where it constitutes the threat the NYTimes decries or it did not much exist and therefore is no threat. One of the two can be true, but not both. The NYTimes continues:


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.”
Posting very sensitive, undoubtedly secret restricted data is treason, isn't it? And very irresponsible. The NYTimes should know.

Frankly, I'm rather disappointed in the Times for warning me, this late in the game, of the terrible dangers that lurked in Saddam's archives. Recipes for unthinkable weapons that could have been given to just anyone, something Saddam surely wouldn't do unlike the Bush administration which evidently would. They should have warned us sooner, such as during the days when Abu Nidal was in residence in Baghdad, and all those men of good will who are now cutting off the heads of Iraqis by the gross were in charge of those very documents whose shadow menaces the world. But they really didn't exist then, did they? And even if they did they were in safe hands. Because if they did, then taking down Saddam was a responsible thing to do. But they exist now and releasing those newly existing secrets is a terribly irresponsible thing to do. It was the dream of alchemists to turn lead into gold and they failed. The NYTimes has succeeded.

Maybe President Bush and his cabinet are imperfect people or even bad people...a premise with which I obviously disagree. But, it doesn't logically follow from that premise, if it were true, that the NYTimes and all that its ideology represents is good. The terrible possibility exists that Bush may be incompetent and yet the political alternatives worse. People who face amputation from diabetes may not like losing a leg, but often they prefer it to losing their lives. One is bad. The other is worse.

But personally I think the whole debate surrounding Iraq's WMDs is glorified misdirection. America did and does face a threat from terrorist-supporting nations of which Saddam's Iraq was one. Before it was taken down. The AQ Khan network, Iran and North Korea were all part of the threat. That America did not find an actual, ticking nuclear weapon in Iraq doesn't particularly mean anything in an era where design work, production and testing can be divided among anti-American allies. Even refrigerators are made that way today. The gleeful assertion that Saddam didn't "have" WMDs has slowly deligitimized any effort to rid the world of the malignant threat that is growing before its eyes. This campaign has made it politically impossible to act against any nation even if it is in as advanced -- oops -- as retarded a state of development as was Saddam's Iraq. That the threat did not exist was a lie and the greatest danger of all lies, including this one, is that it comes to be accepted as the truth.

Yeah, I read the article.

Oh, and another thing, it was Congress and not the President that posted the documents on the web in the first place.

[ChumpDumper]

So they were a year away fifteen years ago.

[Yonivore]

The defining characteristic of partisan attacks on President Bush has been their unthinking and indiscriminate nature.

In today's example, Bush is to blame for not halting the development of nukes by Iran and North Korea, but he's also to blame for toppling Saddam Hussein due in part to his concern that Saddam was interested in and capable of developing nukes. Critics point to Iran's rise as evidence that Bush misplaced his focus on Iraq but they don't consider how Saddam would have reacted to Iranian nuclear progress.

The New York Times, today, carried that unthinking Bush-bashing to a point beyond caricature and hoisted themselves on their own pitard. The NYTimes quotes, with apparent approval, "experts" who say that Saddam was as little as a year away from building an atom bomb. The Times does so in order to show that the Bush administration acted recklessly (even though it was Congress who ordered the documents posted) when it published captured Iraqi documents that describe that country's WMD programs, because those documents might be used by another country in furtherance of building WMD.

But, wait! Did the Times just say that Saddam's Iraq was a year away from building a nuclear weapon? I guess so. Good thing Saddam's no longer in power.

The New York Times owes Judith Miller an apology. Or at least attribution. Not to mention President Bush.

[Yonivore]

So they were a year away fifteen years ago.
And fourteen...and thirteen...and twelve...etc...

The point is they maintained their knowledge base, much of their equipment, and contacts -- and that would have allowed them to produce a nuclear weapon within a year, particularly if the sanctions were ever lifted with, in case you had forgotten, were decaying under violations by France, Germany, Russia, and Iraq.

[ChumpDumper]

nineteen

ninety

one

Yes the Times justified Bush's invasion of Iraq.

George H. W. Bush.

Bravo.

[Yonivore]

nineteen

ninety

one

Yes the Times justified Bush's invasion of Iraq.

George H. W. Bush.

Bravo.
Hello, the information to allow them to build a nuclear weapon was among the documents recovered post-invasion in 2003.

You're really not very bright, are you?

[ChumpDumper]

Hello, his country and WMD capability were blown to shit after 1991. It takes more than sheets of paper to make a bomb. You're really not very bright are you?

[Yonivore]

Hello, his country and WMD capability were blown to shit after 1991. It takes more than sheets of paper to make a bomb. You're really not very bright are you?
Like scientists...which he had; and equipment...which he had; and uranium...which, according to British Intelligence, he was seeking in large quantities.

If sanctions had crumbled, he could have developed a nuclear weapon within a year. And, that's a fact, Jack.

[ChumpDumper]

:lmao

What uranium sanction was being dropped?

[clambake]

which year?

[spurster]

If the Iraqis had these documents back in 1991, probably every country in the world had them 10 years ago, in part due to our Pakistani friends. Certainly they have them by now, due to BushCo's desperation in putting all these documents on the web hoping for anything WMD.

[Yonivore]

:lmao

What uranium sanction was being dropped?
C'mon, if you can't even admit that France, Russia, Germany, and the U.N. were poking serious holes in the sanctions regimen through their OFF kickback schemes and delivery of military hardware, under the table, then, really, what's the point in even engaging you in a debate?

The illicit contacts with French and Russian businessmen who were willing to take OFF kickbacks in exchange for looking the other way, in and of themselves, consititute a hole in the sanctions that could be exploited as a, what did you call it, "drop in the uranium sanction."

You really are challenged by deductive reasoning and complex thought processes.

[NASCARdad]

The NYT is nothing but a left-wing, liberal rag that I won't even bother reading.

[ChumpDumper]

C'mon, if you can't even admit that France, Russia, Germany, and the U.N. were poking serious holes in the sanctions regimen through their OFF kickback schemes and delivery of military hardware, under the table, then, really, what's the point in even engaging you in a debate?

The illicit contacts with French and Russian businessmen who were willing to take OFF kickbacks in exchange for looking the other way, in and of themselves, consititute a hole in the sanctions that could be exploited as a, what did you call it, "drop in the uranium sanction."

You really are challenged by deductive reasoning and complex thought processes.:lmao How easy do you think it is to get uranium?

You really are challenged by reality.

[Yonivore]

:lmao How easy do you think it is to get uranium?

You really are challenged by reality.
Thankfully, (mostly to British and U. S. Intelligence) not easy at all. However, once obtained, Iraq would have had a nuclear weapon within a year.

[clambake]

Thank goodness. We could have been dead for 14 years already.

[PixelPusher]

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.”

So the Bush Administration posts a "How to guide" on building a nuclear weapon on the internet. Brilliant.

Thank God for the New York Times.

[PixelPusher]

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.

So NRO and redstate.com are running our national security policy now? Was Instapundit in on this too? Talk about an Army of Davids...


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, 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.

So much for the "National Security trump card" Republicans have been waving around.

[Oh, Gee!!]

So much for the "National Security trump card" Republicans have been waving around.

It's funny that Yoni is grasping onto this story when it really makes Bush and congressional Repubs look like a bunch of amateurs.

[PixelPusher]

It's funny that Yoni is grasping onto this story when it really makes Bush and congressional Repubs look like a bunch of amateurs.
Give Yoni a little credit; for once, he's not more concerned about the leak of the story.

[boutons_]

November 4, 2006

U.S. Analysts Had Flagged Atomic Data on Web Site

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Two weeks before the government shut down a Web site holding an archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war, scientists at an American weapons laboratory complained that papers on the site contained sensitive nuclear information, federal officials said yesterday. Two documents were quickly removed.

The Bush administration set up the Web site last March at the urging of Congressional Republicans, who said giving public access to materials from the 48,000 boxes of documents found in Iraq could increase the understanding of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein.

( aka, the incompetence of the WH continues at every turn )

But among the documents posted were roughly a dozen that nuclear weapons experts said constituted a basic guide to building an atom bomb. They were accounts of Mr. Hussein’s nuclear program, which United Nations inspectors dismantled after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

The site was shut down on Thursday night after The New York Times asked questions about the disclosure of nuclear information and complaints that experts had raised. Yesterday, federal officials said they were conducting a review to understand better how and when the warnings had originated and how the bureaucracy had responded.

The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, called the posting of the weapons information “a serious security breach,” and other Democrats called for an investigation. The Republican congressman who had led the campaign for the creation of the Web site, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, questioned whether the government had received any serious warnings about the site, and said he had always stressed the need to “take whatever steps necessary to withhold sensitive documents.”

The complaints two weeks ago by the American weapons scientists, as outlined by federal officials yesterday, indicated for the first time that warnings about the site had come from the government’s arms experts, as well as from international weapons inspectors.

A senior federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California last month had protested some of the weapons papers on the site to the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy that runs the nation’s nuclear arms laboratories. The objections “never perked up to senior management,” the official said. “They stayed at the midlevels.”

Managers at the security administration passed the warning to their counterparts at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversaw the Web site, the official said. As a result, a nuclear weapons expert said, the government pulled two nuclear papers from the Web site last month. He said the dangers of the documents had been recognized at Livermore and in the wider community of government arms experts. “Those two documents were on everybody’s list,” he said.

The first known protest about the site came last April, when United Nations weapons inspectors lodged an objection with the United States mission to the United Nations over a chemical weapons document, diplomats said. It was removed. After the site started posting nuclear documents in September, concern arose among United Nations weapons inspectors in Vienna and New York.

Earlier this week, two European diplomats said that weapons experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that they should warn the United States government of the dangers of posting the documents. They said that Olli J. Heinonen, head of safeguards at the agency, conveyed those concerns last week to the American ambassador to the agency, Gregory L. Schulte.

But Matthew Boland, Mr. Schulte’s spokesman, said yesterday that the ambassador had received no warnings. Asked about that, one of the two European diplomats raised questions about whether Mr. Heinonen had followed through. Even so, intelligence officials in Washington said they were exploring whether the government had received warnings from United Nations inspectors.

An official of National Nuclear Security Administration said his agency would review the documents. To the best of his knowledge, he added, none of them had been reviewed by his agency, which is the government’s expert on nuclear secrets.

=============

The Repugs can't even attempt to disprove that they lied about WMD without fucking it up. :lol

Of course, everybody still knows the Repugs lied about WMD.

You're doing a heckuva job, dubya

[rascal]

Thankfully, (mostly to British and U. S. Intelligence) not easy at all. However, once obtained, Iraq would have had a nuclear weapon within a year.

Your an idiot if you believe they would have developed a nuclear weapon and would have targeted the US with it.

[boutons_]

"Your an idiot if"

wrong, there is no conditional clause, simply:

"Your an idiot"

[Yonivore]

Your an idiot if you believe they would have developed a nuclear weapon and would have targeted the US with it.
You're an idiot if you believe you know what the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein would or would not have done with a nuclear weapon.

[turambar85]

You're an idiot if you believe you know what the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein would or would not have done with a nuclear weapon.

Well, first question. Is/was Saddam a complete fool? If your answer if yes, then proceed to the next question. If your answer is no, then you have no reason to worry because he would not be any threat to America.

2nd question. Would Saddam, being mildly competant, desire to maintain power, or to lose power? If yes, proceed. If no, again, no worries here because he would pose no threat.

3rd question. Would nuking America leave Saddam alive, in power, or healthy? If yes, then you are a complete moron. If no, then why what does he accomplish by nuking America? Death?

So, I suppose that I can assume what Saddam would do. He would NOT nuke America. He would position himself in a way so that he might could attack other countries while preventing America from entering the fray due to alliances and world views, but he would NOT simply throw a nuke in our direction. That is bad for survival. We would see natural selection in action.

[ChumpDumper]

Well, since the Republicans just gave away all their nuclear plans by posting them on the web, I want to congratulate them for making the wolrd less safe.

Again.

[gtownspur]

Well, since the Republicans just gave away all their nuclear plans by posting them on the web, I want to congratulate them for making the wolrd less safe.

Again.


I guess you would have been content if the repugs would have just told you to trust their Sadaam suspicions because they have this Tripl- Mai-Thai-suplex- Elbow drop-top secret memo Triple teflon coated material that only Rove posseses.

[George Gervin's Afro]

NOt only was this war unecessary the folks who whored the war are incompetent as well.

[Yonivore]

Well, first question. Is/was Saddam a complete fool? If your answer if yes, then proceed to the next question. If your answer is no, then you have no reason to worry because he would not be any threat to America.

2nd question. Would Saddam, being mildly competant, desire to maintain power, or to lose power? If yes, proceed. If no, again, no worries here because he would pose no threat.

3rd question. Would nuking America leave Saddam alive, in power, or healthy? If yes, then you are a complete moron. If no, then why what does he accomplish by nuking America? Death?

So, I suppose that I can assume what Saddam would do. He would NOT nuke America. He would position himself in a way so that he might could attack other countries while preventing America from entering the fray due to alliances and world views, but he would NOT simply throw a nuke in our direction. That is bad for survival. We would see natural selection in action.
All your questions became moot in March of 2003. Try to keep up.

[ChumpDumper]

I guess you would have been content if the repugs would have just told you to trust their Sadaam suspicions because they have this Tripl- Mai-Thai-suplex- Elbow drop-top secret memo Triple teflon coated material that only Rove posseses.So you are in favor of releasing nuclear blueprints to every terraist on the planet for political purposes. Understood.

[gtownspur]

So you are in favor of releasing nuclear blueprints to every terraist on the planet for political purposes. Understood.


Sure, maybe they can all start their own backyard Nucleur Facility with the chemistry set they got for christmas. :toast

[clambake]

Too bad we've lost this "justified" war.

Give bush some credit. He's made us the most loathsome country on earth and diminished the perceived power of God in one fell swoop. He's made programmed robot christain radicals believe it's destiny to destroy Islamic radicals.

I can't think of two groups that deserve each other more.

[turambar85]

All your questions became moot in March of 2003. Try to keep up.

My questions were directly in response to your claim that we wouldnt have known what Saddam would have done, which is also moot in after '03.

Why don't you keep up with the thread?

[gtownspur]

we would of had nucleur armed Iraq and Iran possibly.

That to me would be a legit concern.

[smeagol]

What a useless war. What a useless way to through away money.

[gtownspur]

What a useless war. What a useless way to through away money.


Ok.

[Oh, Gee!!]

You're an idiot if you believe you know what the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein would or would not have done with a nuclear weapon.

and yet Dubya started a war over that "what if."

[Drachen]

we would of had nucleur armed Iraq and Iran possibly.

That to me would be a legit concern.


Iran?

[xrayzebra]

Well, first question. Is/was Saddam a complete fool?
2nd question. Would Saddam, being mildly competant, want to lose power?

3rd question.



Saddam was offered a chance to get out of
Iraq, alive and with his wealth. Even a country
was found that would offer him asylum. And
he ignored it. Now who is the fool. He was and
he would have used whatever to further his
goals.

[turambar85]

Saddam was offered a chance to get out of
Iraq, alive and with his wealth. Even a country
was found that would offer him asylum. And
he ignored it. Now who is the fool. He was and
he would have used whatever to further his
goals.

No, his only foolish act was "misunderestimating" the prowess of George Bush Jr.

He did not believe that we would seriously use what happened as a pretence for war. He has done horrible things in the past, and now he gets taken out because somebody else had attacked us??

Saddam thought that he could ride the storm, and maintain power. But leaving his country prematurely he would have looked weak, lost his only tool, fear, and perhaps lost his country too. The only chance he had was calling out bluff.

Maybe Saddam is a bad gambler, but he is no fool. His only goal is maintaining power, and nuking America, with Bush as president of all things, is a bad way of prolonging your life!

[clambake]

What happened to your love affair with "W"?

[Nbadan]

Times pooh-poohs on Republican congressional candidates...

November 5, 2006
NY Times Endorses No Republicans for U.S. Congress
By REUTERS


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The New York Times, one of the oldest and most respected U.S. newspapers, said on Sunday that for the first time in memory it was endorsing no Republican U.S. congressional candidates this year.

In an editorial, the Times criticized the Republican-led Congress on matters from tax cuts to energy policy, and charged it has failed to hold President Bush accountable for the unpopular Iraq War.

``This election is indeed about George W. Bush -- and the congressional majority's insistence on protecting him from the consequences of his mistakes and misdeeds,'' the Times editorialized.

The Bush administration has had a number of clashes in recent years with the Times, particularly for the newspaper's disclosure of its warrantless domestic spying program.

The newspaper, founded in 1851, wrote in its editorial: ``On Tuesday, when this page runs the list of people it has endorsed for election, we will include no Republican congressional candidates for the first time in our memory.''

NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-usa-elections-nytimes.html?pagewanted=print)

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, the other show drops over the document fiasco


WASHINGTON -- Four Democratic senators demanded on Saturday that the Bush administration explain its decision to post documents from Saddam Hussein's covert nuclear program on a now-shuttered federal Web site.

The lawmakers told President Bush's director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, that it was "shocking that sensitive documents directly related to the design of a nuclear weapon were made public by the executive branch."

Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada, Carl Levin of Michigan, Joe Biden of Delaware and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also questioned whether political pressure from congressional Republicans played a role.

Negroponte on Thursday suspended public access to the site Thursday night, after The New York Times asked officials whether the site provided too much information on making atomic bombs for an article it published Friday. Negroponte, who had ordered the documents released, also began a review of the consequences, including who accessed the documents.

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/04/AR2006110400492_pf.html)

Looks like Yoni was trying to 'poison the well' before this story broke out in the M$M.