The levels of irony on display with the “revelation” by the New York Times that some of the Saddam documents dealing with Hussein’s drive for nuclear weapons may constitute a dangerous release of classified info on how to build them is so perfect, so exquisitely delightful that it’s at times like these I wish I was a poet.
Only The Bard himself could do justice to the smorgasbord of delectable incongruities, tasty paradoxes, and bitterly sardonic idiocies that the New York Times, the left, our intelligence agencies, and yes – even those of us who pined for the release of this historic treasure trove of data have ultimately fallen into.
The New York Times, a news organ that has on many occasions revealed the existence of some of the most classified intelligence programs the government uses to protect American citizens, in violation of the law, of common sense, and (my own opinion) of their patriotic duty during a time of war, now implicitly criticizes the Bush Administration for (wait for it)...releasing classified information!
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.â€
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.
“The NYTimes blabbermouths are accusing the Bush administration of being careless with national security data?
Ouch. Stop. Sides. Splitting.
There really isn’t anything else one can say. Words are inadequate to the task of describing the poetic blindness evinced by The Times as they blithely empty the remaining arrows from their quiver of political barbs flung toward Bush and the Republicans in the lead up to Tuesday’s election. But to prove my point about this particular story being full of a particularly tasty brand of ironic disposition, in the process of trying to hurt the Republicans, they actually make their case about Saddam’s pre-war ties to terrorists for them.
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.
Ed points to this excerpt that seems to explode a few cherished myths of the left about how close Saddam was to building an atomic bomb:
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.
The New York Times – A Shill for Republicans? Who woulda thunkit?
Speaking of the left, it’s not surprising that they obediently took up the cudgel handed them by The Times to immediately bash Bush, the GOP Congress, and most notably, those of us who agitated for the release of the Saddam documents in the first place. Alas, in this season of ironic transposition and in their gleeful haste to score political points, they neglected to recall their previous position regarding the relative danger of Iran.
Even if some of the documents revealed secrets that might be helpful to a country’s nuclear program, how could it help a country like Iran who, according to legions of lefties, was not interested in building a bomb and was no threat to the United States in the first place?
To avoid this logical fallacy, the left does as it always does; they ignore the reality of any previous position they’ve taken and substitute an alternative narrative that begins, for all practical purposes, in medias res:
I’ve got a question for every Republican member of Congress on the campaign trail. Were you involved in this plan to propagandize to the American people that was so shoddy, so forced, so haphazardly thrown together that you gave al Qaeda and every other bad guy the plans for how to nuke New York?Of course, we won’t ever have any hearings on this issue, or find out what went wrong, because the Republicans control Congress and they don’t hold the Bush administration accountable. They simply pressure Bush to literally hand Al Qaeda and Iran the plans for making a nuclear bomb.
Forgoing irony for the moment to highlight ignorance, here’s an expert’s opinion of whether or not al-Qaeda could use the information from the leaked web pages to build a bomb:
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.â€
I would suggest Mr. Aravosis stick with outing gays, which is something his personality and intelligence is perfectly suited – that of a grub crawling out from under a rock to “out” the slug as a multi-sexual mollusk. His powers of analysis – as in warning of an imminent attack by Evil George on Iran before the election next Tuesday – leave much to be desired.
For true irony (rather than blatant stupidity) Booman fills the bill nicely:
[T]he Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has completely f*cked up. You see, Peter Hoekstra just couldn’t believe Saddam Hussein has no WMD and thus posed no threat to the U.S. or his neighbors. So he threw a tantrum and insisted that our intelligence agencies put all the documents we seized in Iraq on the Internet where citizen wingnuts, fluent in Arabic, could discover evidence that our trained professional had missed. How did that work out?[snip]
Hoekstra is supposed to be safe, but he is a total idiot that has endangered the safety of all 300 million Americans. There is no way he should be able to survive this, but Kotos doesn’t have much time to get the message out. Give him ten bucks so he can run some quick radio ads and maybe we’ll get a real progressive in a comservative (sic) western Michigan seat.
Leaving aside the laughably amateurish notion that a Dennis Kucinich liberal would have a ghost of a chance to win even if Hoekstra were to keel over and die, note first the title of Mr. Booman’s piece; “Peter Hoekstra Handed Our Enemies the Bomb.”
When has anyone on the left referred to any nation in the world as “our enemy” recently? Certainly not the Yankee Doodle minutemen killing our soldiers in Iraq. Those cuddly mullahs in Iran? The Laughing Goat in Venezuela? The inscrutable Mr. Kim in North Korea?
For the life of me, I can’t recall “enemy” being used by the left in any other context except when referring to the President of the United States. It would be delicious irony indeed if, in their haste to skewer Republicans over this story that the left discovered there are, in fact, nations who wish us ill and would destroy us if they could.
But I expect this eye-opening experience for the left to be a short lived fad – sort of like Hula Hoops or Davey Crockett hats but without the enormous collectible value attached. Once ensconced comfortably in power, the left will return to the moral blindness and suicidal ignorance about our enemies that has been their hallmark since 9/11.
In the end, I can’t let this ironic digression from the real world of a vitally important election go without reference to my own part and the part played by many conservatives in this Shakespearean interlude. We asked for it and we got it. And yes, as Ed Morrissey points out, many documents have surfaced (unreported by the Times and other mainstream news outlets) that prove if not conclusively than certainly circumstantially that Saddam Hussien had ties to terrorists and terrorist organizations – even al-Qaeda – that went far beyond what our intelligence agencies were telling the executive branch or the American people prior to the war.
But in our haste to discover the truth and in the Administration’s zeal to participate in this experimental program of unprecedented citizen-government cooperation, some respected experts believe we have damaged our own cause and given valuable information to those who wish to destroy us. This is perhaps the greatest and least palatable irony of all.
And in the increasingly dangerous world in which we live that will soon require decisions of monumental historical import regarding war and peace, the only laughter we may hear will be the bitter cackling of the Angel of Death, circling above bleached bones and rubble – remnants of a war that irony forgot.
3:03 pm
After wading through the verbage and the “oohhh, aren’t liberals awful” boilerplate, you approve of the government posting instructions on how to make an atomic bomb in the public arena. Is there no bottom to the cesspool conservatives use to never be wrong?
3:08 pm
It seems sanctions were unlikely to be in place for ever. As I recall, the Iraq Survey Group had concluded that Iraq was close to a de facto end to the sanctions, however, this does nothing to vindicate the Bush Administration. For the current state of affairs, the Republicans and the Bush bear all of the blame. If Iraq and Afghanistan had been executed competently we would not be in the situation we are currently in.
Immediately after the attacks of 911 the country should have been placed on a war footing. If not then, it should have been placed on a war footing prior to the Iraq war. The optimal solution would be to send more troops to Afghanistan and Iraq and to allow the troops currently in those areas to fight more aggresively, however, this is not going to happen. For such a policy to be implemented, the American people and the Government would need to be on board. Right now they are not. As such, we see major changes very soon.
By the middle of 2007 the US will be mostly out of Iraq. By this time there will be no troops officially in Shia or Sunni areas. The operation will change to one primarily using special ops who will be backed up by air support. There will be 10,000 or fewer of them and they will be stationed in Kurdish areas or perhaps in Kuwait. The only time they will intervene in Iraqi affairs will be to try and prevent the formation of terrorists bases. Hopefully this strategy will work becuase it is the one we will be using.
3:54 pm
“But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb. ”
Okay, I have a question. How come it’s only been “in recent weeks” that the site has posted this stuff. Do you think this is a set up? That the stuff was purposely posted so the Times could write this silly article? Nothing would surprise me anymore. The Times and Dems minions are everywhere.
Biggest failure of the Bush government: not cleaning out people who needed to be cleaned out of DC.
6:24 pm
I agree with you article. One small point of grammar; the end of the first sentence should read: “x x x I wish I were a poet. (were not was).
8:06 pm
New York Times: Hussein months away from a nuke
About those WMDs and close ties to Jihadi terrorists: Iraq had ‘em, according to the Times (an Illustrated Guide)...
8:49 pm
“I would suggest Mr. Aravosis stick with outing gays, which is something his personality and intelligence is perfectly suited – that of a grub crawling out from under a rock to “out†the slug as a multi-sexual mollusk. His powers of analysis – as in warning of an imminent attack by Evil George on Iran before the election next Tuesday – leave much to be desired.”
You GO Rick!
10:19 pm
[url=http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/nyt-saddam-was-year-away-from-building.html]The New York Times[/url] has become so dumbed-down that the venerable tabloid of fools tries an October/November surprise that backfires stupendously.
[url=http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/nyt-saddam-was-year-away-from-building.html]Gateway Pundit[/url] has a whole cartload of documents from the hoard which the NYT has selectively plucked a few anti-Bush leaflets, and demonstrated that the whole MSM agitprop campaign about Saddam having nothing to do with Al Qaeda is a raft of lies. And how does that true patriot elder statesman Wilson feel about his pronunciamento on the NYT Op-Ed page?
Indeed, things are going badly in Iraq, but the overall MSM take on Iraq is also a tendentious factitious pile of balderdash—-one-sided and dishonest to its core.
The appeaser Dems are about ready to hijack the USS Free World and turn it into a multi-culti globalist welcome-wagon for terrorists.
Maybe there’s still time for turning the big ship around, but I doubt it.
10:42 pm
Sorry – the program had been dismantled by the time the Dear Leader invaded:
http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2006/11/iraqs-nukes-remedial-reading.html
11:25 pm
“explode a few cherished myths of the left about how close Saddam was to building an atomic bomb”
The myth isn’t that Saddam never wanted to build an atomic bomb. The myth is that because of the sanctions, Saddam dismantled his bomb program and showed the results to the UN. This was verified by the UN, the IAEA inspectors and the three US teams of inspectors who went in after the war. There’s nothing in the NY Times report to contradict that.
Also, in the lead-up to the war, it was the New York Times’ reporting that gave the most cover to the spurious claims about Saddam’s weapons programs.
11:42 pm
The entire case against Saddam and WMD rests on the assumption that sanctions would be in place forever.
The fact that in its totality, the left was agitating to lift economic sanctions – a move the Duelfer Report noted would almost have certainly made the arms embargo irrelevant – means that once free of constraints, Saddam would have been a year away from building a bomb.
Raw material? He had 500 tons of refined yellowcake under UN seal at al-Tuwaitha, an enrichment facility outside of Baghdad. Experts say that he could have built 6-8 bombs with that much uranium.
Remember, 10 years earlier we had carted off nearly a ton of Highly Enriched uranium to Russia and had it made inert. At that time (right after the Gulf War) you may recall the surprise of UNSCOM at the fact that Saddam was MONTHS away from enriching that uranium to the 85% necessary to construct a weapon.
Saddam had the raw material. He knew how to enrich uranium. He had a bomb design. Add it up and it doesn’t matter what he showed the UN, his program could have been reconstituted and up and running in a matter of months with a workable bomb ready in about a year.
And THAT is what is implied in the Times article.
11:59 pm
You tighty-righties should all get down on your knees and pray that we don’t line you all up against a gay bathhouse wall.
Vote Democrat, don’t vote for scummy tighty-righties. Republicans have no family values, and they publish nuclear secrets for terrorists to peruse at their leisure.
12:14 am
Saddam Closer To Bomb Than Anyone Thought
The New Yorks times confirms that in 2002 Saddam Hussein’s “scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away:”
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in…
12:22 am
“Florence Said:
11:59 pm
You tighty-righties should all get down on your knees and pray that we don’t line you all up against a gay bathhouse wall.”
Why is it that leftist insult and name call during the course of a discussion? Really simple: the left’s positions are so completely preposterous that they can’t defend themselves and go name-calling. Florence, you proved my point that I have been explaining for weeks to my friends: Leftists really don’t have anything left but name-calling and hyperbole.
1:56 am
Couple of points:
Iraq could have reconstituted its program in about a year provided it had access to specialized materials and equipment only available in the West. It would take time to circumvent sanctions on this sensitive equipment so my assessment is more like 2 years, but at this point it doesn’t really matter anymore.
What I find even more ironic is that the technology Iraq used up to 1991, EMIS (electromagnetic isotope separation), was based on published data from the Manhattan project. We used the EMIS process to produce our first uranium before switching to the Gaseous Diffusion (a much more efficient technology). Much of the enrichment-related technical documentation from the manhattan project was published because, at the time, EMIS was so expensive, inefficient and impractical that few believed anyone would go that route for enrichment. Well, Iraq improved upon the EMIS technology and had a full scale plant in operation until they declared it as part of the armistace after the first Gulf War.
So if this technology has now made its way to the Iranians, then we are the ultimate father of that technology. However, I’m not sure how it will help the Iranians since they’ve chosen centrifuge technology which is much more efficient and much easier to hide.
1:58 am
[...] But the left will deny reality, as they usually do, but continue to shoot themselves in the foot as they shrilly cry “it’s all your fault!”. Rick Moran: For true irony (rather than blatant stupidity) Booman fills the bill nicely: [T]he Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has completely f*cked up. You see, Peter Hoekstra just couldn’t believe Saddam Hussein has no WMD and thus posed no threat to the U.S. or his neighbors. So he threw a tantrum and insisted that our intelligence agencies put all the documents we seized in Iraq on the Internet where citizen wingnuts, fluent in Arabic, could discover evidence that our trained professional had missed. How did that work out? [...]
8:30 am
[...] Also see Hot Air Wizbang QandO Michelle Malkin Sister Toldjah Dan Riehl who says the story just got worse…heh. MVRWC Gateway Pundit Anchoress Rightwing Nuthouse OTB In The Bullpen Argghhh! Joust The Facts [...]
10:34 am
“...I can’t recall “enemy†being used by the left in any other context except when referring to the President of the United States.”
Here are some people on the left who do not shy away from using the term enemy in reference to Islamofascists.
Paul Berman. Terror and Liberalism.
Ian Buruma. Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies.
Oliver Kamm. Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy
They may not make as much noise as the moonbats but they do exist. Check this out:
http://www.newamericanliberalism.org/
Jeffrey Herf, “New Liberalism, Radical Islam, and the War in Iraq”
Robert Lieber on BBC Radio, “Pullout from Iraq Would be Disaster”
Paul Berman defends the term “Islamofascism”, as does Fouad Adjami
Judith Miller, Good news from Iraq: An interview with Kurdish President
William Shawcross, “Deny the Islamists a Victory”
Zaid Al-Ali, “Saving Iraq”: A Critique of Peter W. Galbraith” and Iraq Partition Plans
Roger Scruton, “The Great Hole of History”
Kanan Makiya, “Iraq: Overthrowing Hussein Was Right”
Brian Brivati, “A Victim-centred Foreign Policy”
Russell Berman, “Khatami, Again: From Harvard to St. Andrews”
Norman Geras, “Liberal Debacle”
Fred Halliday, “The Left and the Jihad”
10:59 am
Ed:
...you approve of the government posting instructions on how to make an atomic bomb in the public arena.
Maybe I should reduce the number of syllables in the words I write so that retarded high school drop outs like you can understand what I say. Quote from above:
But in our haste to discover the truth and in the Administration’s zeal to participate in this experimental program of unprecedented citizen-government cooperation, some respected experts believe we have damaged our own cause and given valuable information to those who wish to destroy us. This is perhaps the greatest and least palatable irony of all.
And in the increasingly dangerous world in which we live that will soon require decisions of monumental historical import regarding war and peace, the only laughter we may hear will be the bitter cackling of the Angel of Death, circling above bleached bones and rubble – remnants of a war that irony forgot.
How much more condemnation do you want. How idiotic is your statement when I blame MYSELF and other bloggers for the release of damaging information. Are you totally insensate?
Your problem Ed is that you either don’t or can’t read what I write. And your knee jerk reaction to anything I write is getting so tiresome that if I had the energy, I’d click over to my C-Panel and ban your ass.
1:49 pm
That Impartial Press…..
The extremely predictable last-minute election-swaying hit piece from the New York Times is just about due. Wonder what it will be this time…and if it will involve more national security leakage?
2:40 pm
[...] Also writing: Right Wing Nuthouse Flopping Aces Blue Crab Boulevard Ace Oak Leaf at Polipundit Ed Driscoll Just One Minute Carol Platt Liebau Called as Seen Sensible Mom Confederate Yankee Fausta Bizzyblog pinged back with The ‘No WMD’ Lie: NY Times Adds More Icing to Already-Baked CakeSaddam Closer To Bomb Than Anyone Thought « SSBG pinged back with Saddam Closer To Bomb Than Anyone Thought « SSBGJust Some Poor Schmuck tracked back with The Anchoress Had The Same Reaction I Did… [...]
3:51 pm
Saddam had the raw material. He knew how to enrich uranium. He had a bomb design. Add it up and it doesn’t matter what he showed the UN, his program could have been reconstituted and up and running in a matter of months with a workable bomb ready in about a year.
No – he had no centrifuge lines in 02/03. No nuclear program, not even really a freeze-dried program, just some decade-old expertise sitting in the heads of a few scientists/engineers, rusting away from disuse, and some useful documents. The Duelfur report was quite clear on that. Basically, if sanctions/embargo had been lifted, and Saddam had reconstituted a crash program, he would have been a few years away from a bomb, assuming no intervention, and intervention (covert, and possibly massively overt) would have been almost certain, since it would have been clear that there was a crash program to make weapons.
Regardless, the threat that is important is Iran. The evidence (which is still unfortunately ambiguous) for a Iranian nuclear weapons program is much clearer than the evidence of a post-late-90s Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
1:58 am
Submitted for Your Approval
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…
11:27 am
Eye on the Watcher’s Council
As you may know the members of the Watcher’s Council each nominate one of his or her own posts and one non-Council post for consideration by the whole Council. The complete list of this week’s Council nominations is here.
The Glittering Eye…
2:29 am
The Council Has Spoken!
First off… any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here, and here. Die spambots, die! And now… the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are Irony so Thick You Can Bathe In It…
10:08 am
[...] The Watcher’s Council has announced its picks for the most outstanding posts of the preceding week. The winning Council post was Right Wing Nut House’s post, “Irony So Thick You Could Bathe In Itâ€. Second place honors went to American Future’s “Why Not Turkey?â€. [...]
10:54 am
[...] Congratulations to Right Wing Nut House for its winning Council post, “Irony So Thick You Could Bathe In It”. I took the runner-up spot with “Why Not Turkey?”. [...]
4:08 pm
The Death Knell of the MEME, ‘Bush Lied – People Died!’
*****SCROLL FOR UPDATES*****
RBT has to credit Flopping Aces and Right Wing Nuthouse for having the best posts on the total irony of the NYT’s piece on
1:55 pm
Council speak 11/10/2006
A few days late and just before the new entries are announced, here are the results of last week’s voting. The full results are here. The winning post was Right Wing Nuthouse’s Irony so Thick You Can Bathe In It about the revelations that Saddam had …
3:44 am
[...] November 16, 2006Watching Weasels Willing Whorage. I have submitted my post, “The Caucasian Tinderbox” to the Watcher’s Council. As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around…Â per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process. Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on. Filed under News by Popovich at 6:40 pm EST (GMT+10) Permalink • Print • Email • Comment [...]
5:59 pm
[...] The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category was yours truly for my post “Irony So Thick You Can Bathe In It.” Finishing second was American Future for “Why Not Turkey.” [...]
6:45 pm
The Watcher’s Council: A Double Dip
A carefully calibrated dose of lateness affords me the opportunity to bring you a super-sized double helping of results from …
9:13 am
The Council Has Spoken … Twice
The winning Council Post for the week of November 10 was IRONY SO THICK YOU CAN BATHE IN IT at Right Wing Nut House. There was a second place tie between Why Not Turkey? at American Future and Damned Fools
10:00 am
[...] Irony so Thick You Can Bathe In ItRight Wing Nut House [...]