Bush Helps Terrorists Build Bombs

by Steve

If a vote for Democrats is a vote for terrorists, as Bush says, then why did his administration make it easier for terrorists to build bombs? In their zeal to make the case that Saddam had WMD’s, the Bush Administration and the GOP congress set up a website to make public the documents seized from the Hussein regime after the invasion, in the hope that somehow these documents would prove the righteousness of the war. Instead, the Bush Administration has now unwittingly shared highly-sensitive details on how to build atomic weapons with any terrorist with a laptop.

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.”

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.

To his credit, John Negroponte resisted the wishes of the GOP Congress to set up the website, but he was overruled by George W. Bush.

In Europe, a senior diplomat said atomic experts there had studied the nuclear documents on the military Web site and judged their public release as potentially dangerous. “It’s a cookbook,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his agency’s rules. “If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.”

And who has now helped the terrorists learn how to build a bomb, besides Bush?

The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Last November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, wrote to Mr. Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material. The sheer volume of the documents, they argued, had overwhelmed the intelligence community.

So an administration that has launched an unprecedented campaign to hide secrets and politically damaging information from the American people managed to aid terrorists by releasing documents without knowing what was in them.

I think the Democrats have their final talking points the remaining days of the campaign.

Hat tip to Drudge