Recap: to bolster WMD claims Bush put nuke secerets online because we lacked translators

[troublemaker]

Get this story spun right. This is a very BAD story for Bush. This is not about Iran having a nuke program or about Iraqi WMD. The docs are from long ago when Iraq had a nuke program. (presumably pre first Gulf war). There is no controversy that Iraq had a nuke program way back when. (Though some RW morans will doubtless misread this story as saying something different)

The Bush admin was so spazzed out to make bogus claims that they had found anything worthwhile in Iraq they posted sensitive nuke data on the frigging internet which happened to include some nuke data that was not publicly available and that the IAEA fears helped out Iran's nuke program. (This would have been the same post invasion panic phase when Rummy ordered full-on torture in Iraq to find some WMD somewhere, leading to Abu Ghraib)

NYT REPORTING FRIDAY, SOURCES SAY: U.S. POSTING OF IRAQ NUKE DOCS ON WEB COULD HAVE HELPED IRAN...

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... Developing...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html
http://www.drudgereport.com/

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. So what does this mean...?

Bush's government posts Iraq's old nuclear research documents on one of the Internets -- it's all right there, in those tubes -- in order that Iran can use the information, which gives Bush an excuse to attack them? :tinfoilhat:

[troublemaker]

2. part of a pattern, along with abu ghraib

Not finding WMD lead to some real freak-outs, like Rummy ordering bust-out torture in Iraq and the US posting everything we found in Iraq on the net.

This is what they do... the disclose sensitive info to serve political ends, even when it helps Iran.

Notice that Iran's program is so primitive that these basic docs could have helped them. (Nothing about helping NK which was well advanced past this basic "how to make a bomb" sort of info)

[troublemaker]

3. More Information on the OIFD project > > > > > > > >

notes: Material no longer online (probably)

(docs link on wikipedia is broken link. Nothing jumps out on Google)

Wikipedia summary: "Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents refers to some 55,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that may or may not have been produced by the government of Saddam Hussein. The documents date from the 1980s through the post-Saddam period. The U.S. government seized the records after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and is releasing them on the Internet, requesting Arabic translators around the world to help in the translation. The documents can be found at the Foreign Military Studies Office Joint Reserve Intelligence Center website."


Notice that the web posting was to encourage arab translators world wide to take a crack at it
Please understand that... we didn't have enough Arabic translators so we posted pottentialy sensitive documents we couldn't read on the internet in hopes that Arabic speakers worldwide might translate them for us.

Again, we didn't know what they said, so we posted them on the internet in hopes someone would tell us...

Question, hw many Arabic speakers does Al Queada have? Or Syria, for that matter.

Amazing! It's beyond anything.

[Lex]

4. The Bush Admin gave Iran nuclear weapons info over the internet?!

Was this inadvertent or by design I'm wondering.

[troublemaker]

5. It's worse than you think. We put the shit online without knowing what it said!!

It was part of a project to get Arabs around the world to help translate documents we couldn't read due to lack of Arabic translators.

Think about that...

[Brundle_Fly]

7. Holy Jesus.

and you thought losing 80 truckloads of Iraq explosives was bad.

That means anyone could have access the documents and translated them and sold them to any country...

colossal.

incompetence.

[Lex]

6. .

K & R

[slaveplanet]

8. It's not the first time

they got busted for this once before, and have had to remove the documents before,
they are doing this on purpose:

2005 article

On June 26, the CIA posted a press release about Obeidi's cache -- the most valuable WMD evidence the U.S. has yet obtained in Iraq -- on its official website. It also put up digital photos of the components and even one of the key centrifuge diagrams. The pictures, which Albright says could be "incredibly useful" to any regime trying to start a covert nuclear program, were online for almost a week -- long enough to be downloaded and made freely available on the Internet -- before the agency took them down. Literally buried for 12 years, some of Saddam's hoard of nuclear knowledge got out because of the U.S. government, not in spite of it.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/09/armageddon-2.html


‘The proliferation risk is higher than it was before, and a chaotic situation means this technology is going to spread,’ says Robert Baer, who spent 21 years as a case officer with the CIA in the Middle East. If the administration had been serious about neutralizing Saddam's weapons program, he says, ‘the troops would have been securing equipment at weapons sites as they invaded, and they would have been looking for scientists.... It tells you that this war had nothing to do with WMDs.’”