Blue Crab Boulevard

The November Surprise

Courtesy of the New York Times. If what information I am getting right now is correct, there is a Drudge report that the NYT plans a surprise for tomorrow. As it shows right now on Drudge:

NYT REPORTING FRIDAY, SOURCES SAY: Federal government set up Web site — Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal — 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…

Greg Tinti has a relevant question:

But fundamentally: doesn't the existence of this document prove that Iraq had WMD capability–nuclear capability–and all Saddam had to do was wait out the UN sanctions and then he'd be back on his merry way to the atomic club?

So does Allah:

On behalf of every conservative in the United States, let me ask one question:

Exactly how far along was Saddam’s nuclear research that Iran might possibly benefit from it?

While I am not an expert on nuclear weapons, per se, I have a fair bit of knowledge about them and have an extensive background in the nuclear energy field. I can say, with certainty, that you do not learn helpful information in developing technology by looking at someone who is not as far along as you are. That means Iraq was further along than Iran.

Let me put this another way: You cannot simultaneously hold the position that Saddam did not have WMD programs and that he had advanced knowledge of nuclear weapons that would be of use to Iran. You cannot simultaneously believe Iran has a peaceful nuclear program and a need for advanced knowledge of nuclear weapons.

This may be a surprise too far if it was intended to damage Bush.

UPDATE: NYT article here. They are spinning it to try to damage Bush and the Republicans. But the fact here is that Iraq had functional core designs that would be useful to Iran. Again, you cannot have it both ways here. There was a real threat if these designs were what we are being told they were.

UPDATE: Others: Say Anything, Flopping Aces, PoliPundit, STACLU, Rightwinged,

UPDATE: Best description yet from The Anchoress: The TIMESTANIC!

Blogosphere, Iran, Media, War | Gaius November 2, 2006

By Anchoress, November 2, 2006 @ 10:24 pm

Perhaps BDS has so infected the NY Times that their ability to reason has been completely destroyed?

Why am I even asking…
By Puggsthegrey, November 2, 2006 @ 10:45 pm

So Saddam was a threat, a direct repudiation of the no WMD crowds crowing since the war started, and they choose to take issue with the White House for disclosing the very papers that prove it?

While if they had blacked out any of it, they would claim the papers proved nothing…

So no evidence is bad, but giving evidence is worse,. because it makes them look like asses.. er I mean endangers the world.. yeah that’s it, it endangers the world…

if they hoped it would hurt the GOP, they seriously misunderstand the nature of the papers that were shown. They greatly underestimate the intelligence of the voters as well.

This is asinine.

You arrest a guy for conspiarcy to break into your house and kill your family,

The defense taunts nuh huh,..

You provide the proof of the conspiracy,..

and the press complains it shows other burglars how to do the same?

That’s kinda twisted, and beside the original point.
By Puggsthegrey, November 2, 2006 @ 10:59 pm

My knowledge of nukes, is of doctrine, the basics of how they work, and the policies of their use. I was a security specialist assigned to nuclear weapons security at FE Warren AFB in the early 80’s. 90th SMW, 4th Air Division, 15th Air Force, Strategic Air Command. We got regular MAST briefings, though the physics of the weapons was a different specialty than mine. Nominal yeild on average was 250-350 kilotons, three warheads per missile, 200 Minuteman III’s spread out over three states. We were tasked with the destruction of the greater Soviet Union in the event of a total exchange, hard targets, bases, manufacturing, ports…

I was there to shoot anyone attempting to breach security, secure the weapons. No touch pretty pretty bomb, puggs smack fingers… ouchies…

Nukes were of great interest when you might have a few shot at you.
By Scotchtape123, November 3, 2006 @ 8:59 am

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> One of the things that I've been reading is that this validates the invasion of Iraq because Saddam could have sold the plans to build a nuke to terrorists and other countries. What I'm thinking the democrats will say is that the US fought a war to prevent this but in trying to prove that he had plans on how to build a nuke in order to justify the war, the Republicans ended up giving the plans to the everyone, thus themselves causing the very thing they were trying to prevent. I just don't see how proof that Saddam had an advanced nuke program and plans to build a nuke can compete against the point that Republicans are responsible for the details of that program and plan entering the public domain. Or was this information actually already available on the internet and/or not as detailed/all-encompassing as the Times would have us believe? If that's the case, this is just another lame attack piece. If not though, I'm worried the democrats might be able to take control of the House and Senate.
By Puggsthegrey, November 3, 2006 @ 10:45 am

Well that’s the rub, the documents in order to show just how advanced Saddam’s program was, have to be disclosed for independent analysis. Yet the moment they were, those very same people who said that Saddam was no threat, start going on about how anyone can now build a bomb from the information in those documents.

Does anyone believe for a second that partially blacked out documents would have been enough?

No, not when the other side has so much invested in trying to say Saddam was harmless.

I’m not much concerned that basement bombs can be made from these papers. The knowledge of atom bomb building is much more complex than they imply at the Times. You must have skilled people, already know the basics, and realize that just putting components together won’t make a successful bomb. The timing, the tolerances, the spacing, the ignition of the conventional explosives to trigger the reaction,.. very very delicate and precise, beyond a physics major and a truckload of eager jihadis.

Iran?

well they already know alot, and continue their work. But frankly, unemployed technicians from the old Soviet Union, and Pakistan are a much greater threat. Selling their knowledge as hired guns is much more likely, than an Iranian lab monkey slapping his forhead and going “aha!” even if they did get these papers, a very big if. Bush will still be president no matter how the election goes,.. so Iran should worry alot about what is in store for thim if they continue to keep inspecters out.
By John McDermott, November 3, 2006 @ 12:39 pm

“Hoisted on own petard,” is a phrase that vaults it way into the mind. This petty, non-sensical, alleged newspaper with its witless writers, editors, columnists and owner doesn’t have a clue. It’s difficult to discern exactly what devilish machinations are hashing-up their collective minds as they try to low-bridge this country and its administration. We know what side they’re on, though it’s hard to understand why. What is perfectly clear, is they certainly don’t know how.
By Robert Poss, November 4, 2006 @ 9:11 pm

As weâ€™ve known since the early nineties, Iraq got close to building a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Gulf War. The shortest estimates are that Iraq would have needed perhaps another year (without the sanctions imposed in August, 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait).

After the Gulf War, however, the Iraqi nuclear program was destroyed by the IAEA and never reconstituted. During this time the IAEA required Iraq to explain in detail exactly what their pre-91 nuclear program achieved. Copies of these documents were given to the U.N. on repeated occasions, including in fall, 2002.