I’ve decided that unlike Polimom, other bloggers just don’t need beauty sleep; either they’re totally oblivious to black circles under their eyes (and an admirable lack of vanity), or they’re much younger than I am. Either way, though, they were pounding away all night long in response to this story from the NY Times:
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.
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.
This all-nighter produced (as is often the case) some less-than-grounded thinking.
Depending upon where one sits this morning, this is either a confirmation that Saddam Hussein really was about to destroy us all (and therefore, the war is justified), or evidence that the Republicans are risking all our lives by putting these documents out in the first place.
Alternatively (and hysterically), the real story here is that the NY Times reported it.
Evidently, only James Joyner was able to wait until he’d had a full night’s sleep before responding:
I’m a political scientist, not a nuclear scientist, so the technical issues are well beyond my expertise. My gut instinct, though, tells me that technology developed in the 1940s is probably not much of a secret to Iranian nuclear physicists with PhDs from the best universities in the world. But, hey, I could be wrong.
Yes, he could indeed be wrong — and he says he’s willing to be convinced — but I don’t think he’s understating things, primarily because we (as in, the U.S.), long since gave the Iranians much less antiquated information (prior post here). They hardly needed to scour the web for Saddam’s 1991 plans.
Back to bed, folks… we’re too close to the election to go without sleep now.