<p>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.</p>
<p>But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraqs secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.[/q]</p>
<p>Well, leave it to the NY Times to publicize information which is dangerous to the US. I somehow doubt that this is the first time info on building nuclear weapons has been published on the net.</p>
<p>It’s wrong for the press to point it out when our government recklessly endangers national security for no valid reason? </p>
<p>I don’t think so. It’s what a free press is for.</p>
<p>For months our government had information up on the internet that told anyone who wanted to know, how to make Sarin and how to build nuclear weapons. I don’t get why the Times should have kept mum and allowed this continue…</p>
<p>The article makes it clear that the government only pulled the web site after the NYT asked them what the hell they were doing. Without our horrible free press, that staggering incompetence would probably continue until Iran and Al-Qaeda sent those Congressmen a nice thank-you note.</p>
<p>yh the NYT loves aiding and abeting the enemy “lets tell them about secret interrogation plans the government has, or anti-terror methods like freezing certain accounts, or wiretappng international calls”</p>
<p>A liittle googling reveals Republican Congressspeople wanted documents posted, GW acquiesed to their request over objections by his own National Intelligence Advisor, Negropointe. Subsequent objections made by scientists and international weapons control agencies… but to no avail. </p>
<p>Umm, sjmom, I don’t know where you got that link from, but the nuclear secrets that our government exposed were from before 1991. They don’t demonstrate anything whatsoever about what Saddam was up to after the First Gulf War, which is the critical period for the current Iraq invasion–and anyone who says they did is distorting things very badly. </p>
<p>However old the information was and however little it proved about Saddam’s post Gulf War activities, we still shouldn’t have been making it open to terrorists on the Web, especially in the original Arabic. That we did so over the objections of scientists and the intelligence community, and in the interests of making a political point, is one of the most shameful things our country has done since Watergate.</p>
<p>I went back and read your link in its entirety. Nowhere do the author mention that the nuclear secrets exposed by the government were from before the First Gulf War–much less deal with the implications of that fact, vis a vis using them as justification for invading Iraq over a decade, and a whole war, later.</p>
<p>Thus this statement from the article is very misleading:</p>
<p>“For the story asserts that a) Iraq was on the verge of mastering nuclear weapons technology and b) that Iran is trying to build atomic bombs. Or, ‘Bush didn’t lie.’”</p>
<p>But it does raise an interesting point. If Bush and his advisors thought that there would be anything this serious a threat to national security in the papers, they clearly wouldn’t have put them online (unless they truly don’t give a darn about our country, which I find hard to believe). So even the people at the top apparently didn’t think there was any real justification for invading Iraq in those papers.</p>