How to build an atomic bomb....

Today’s New York Times article titled U.S. Web Archive is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer might as well been titled “Don’t re-elect Republicans to Congress.”

Last March, the federal government set up the website, “Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal” to publicize and defend their perception that prewar Iraq was a serious threat to national security. Perhaps they thought that by using authentic documents proving Iraq dangerous would counter the “no blood for oil” arguments. The federal government shut-down the website last night because of concerns that the archive created a danger and that countries such as Iran could use the detailed narratives, charts, and diagrams as a sort of nuclear cookbook.

The author of the NY Times article, William J. Broad, writes “the impetus for the Web site’s creation came from an array of sources – private conservative groups, Congressional Republicans and some figures in the Bush administration – who clung to the belief that close examination of the captured documents would show that Mr. Hussein’s government had clandestinely reconstituted an unconventional arms program.” Considering that the situation in Iraq will be one the most important issues affecting a person’s vote this Tuesday (see Expat’s blog post “All Politics May Not Be Local”), this article seems to spin the issue against conservatives in Congress, blaming them for irresponsibly “toss[ing] the match into this flammable area.”