The Discerning Texan

All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
Saturday, November 04, 2006

NYT "Expose" PROVES Iraq WAS going Nuclear (UPDATED)

The Democrats' mantra all along has been that President Bush "lied us" into the Iraq War. Yesterday--in a flawed attempt at a "November Surprise"--the New York Times published an article calling into question certain Iraqi documents that were made public on a government website. Reason: the documents reportedly provided a "how to" guide for making Atomic Bombs.

In reaction to this news, the site was taken down temporarily so that these allegations can be properly vetted. Thus, the fact that the government allowed a site containing this sensitive information to be up is the "November surprise" that is suddenly supposed to keep all the Republicans at home on Tuesday. But hold on just a minute here: is the Times now telling us that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was actually actively engaged in an atomic weapons program?? (Answer: Yes)

You will recall of course the brouhaha about yellowcake in Niger, Colin Powell's presentation to the UN, Joe Wilson, Valerie (Vanity Fair) Plame, blah, blah, blah... Well NOW---in an all out effort to torpedo Republican voter turnout--the Times is calling out the US for publishing Iraqi documents...that show blueprints for building nuclear bombs. Excuse me? So...the official "party line" is that President Bush didn't 'lie us into War' after all, right?

Don't miss Captain Ed's excellent post yesterday about the Iraqi nuclear documents and Saddam's now-documented connections to AQ and other terror groups. Below is a portion of that post relevant to my point about Iraq's Nuclear Program and the War--but the good Captain makes some other interesting points as well (you can
read it all here; bold highlighting is my own):

This is apparently the Times' November surprise, but it's a surprising one indeed. The Times has just authenticated the entire collection of memos, some of which give very detailed accounts of Iraqi ties to terrorist organizations. Just this past Monday, I posted a memo which showed that the Saddam regime actively coordinated with Palestinian terrorists in the PFLP as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On September 20th, I reposted a translation of an IIS memo written four days after 9/11 that worried the US would discover Iraq's ties to Osama bin Laden.

It doesn't end there with the Times, either. In a revelation buried far beneath the jump, the Times acknowledges that the UN also believed Saddam to be nearing development of nuclear weapons:


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.

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 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.
That appears to indicate that by invading in 2003, we followed the best intelligence of the UN inspectors to head off the development of an Iraqi nuke. This intelligence put Saddam far ahead of Iran in the nuclear pursuit, and made it much more urgent to take some definitive action against Saddam before he could build and deploy it. And bear in mind that this intelligence came from the UN, and not from the United States. The inspectors themselves developed it, and they meant to keep it secret. The FMSO site blew their cover, and they're very unhappy about it.

What other highlights has the Times now authenticated? We have plenty:

* 2001 IIS memo directing its agents to test mass grave sites in southern Iraq for radiation, and to use "trusted news agencies" to leak rumors about the lack of credibility of Coalition reporting on the subject. They specify CNN.
* The
Blessed July operation, in which Saddam's sons planned a series of assassinations in London, Iran, and southern Iraq
*
Saddam's early contacts with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda from 1994-7
* UNMOVIC knew of a renewed effort to
make ricin from castor beans in 2002, but never reported it
* The continued development of
delivery mechanisms for biological and chemical weapons by the notorious "Dr. Germ" in 2002

Actually, we have much, much more. All of these documents underscore the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and show that his regime continued their work on banned weapons programs. We have made this case over and over again, but some people refused to believe the documents were genuine. Now we have no less of an authority than the New York Times to verify that the IIS documentation is not only genuine, but presents a powerful argument for the military action to remove Saddam from power.

The Times wanted readers to cluck their tongues at the Bush administration for releasing the documents, although Congress actually did that. However, the net result should be a complete re-evaluation of the threat Saddam posed by critics of the war. Let's see if the Times figures this out for themselves.

Exactly. Sometimes--in their zeal to blast the Bush Administration--reporters fail to see the forest for the trees with the low hanging fruit. Even though it was not their intent, the Times has now made it perfectly clear that Saddam was a nuclear threat, and was much further along towards that end than was Iran.

Hindsight is 20/20. Would we have done things differently had we known the depth of the sectarian hatred between the Sunnis and Shiites? Probably. But there is no question that we were justified and right to have ended the reign of Saddam before he obtained--and used--his nukes.
DiscerningTexan, 11/04/2006 09:26:00 AM |