The story is there is no story

Put me down with James Joyner on this morning’s furor du jour, the New York Time’s front page story of Iraq’s nuclear weapons development plan posted on the web as part of the archive of documents released for public scrutiny:

There was much hoopla overnight, created by a Drudge hyping of a NYT “November surprise” on Iraq’s WMD that, frankly, strikes me as a non-story.

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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.

I don’t agree with the NYT’s (and Left Blogosphere’s) take that this reveals the fecklessness of the Bush Administration.  The difficulty in producing nuclear weapons today is not in knowing how:  with the right materials and a little know-how available to any university-trained physicist a nuclear weapon can be made in a good machine shop.

Nor do I agree with the Right Blogosphere that this is the smoking gun on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.  Does anyone doubt that Saddam wanted a nuclear weapon and would have developed them had he been able?

So what you’re left with is not much of a story.

James has a round-up of Left and Right Blogosphere reaction.

1 comment… add one
  • [url=http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/nyt-saddam-was-year-away-from-building.html]The New York Times[/url] has become so dumbed-down that the venerable tabloid of fools tries an October/November surprise that backfires stupendously.

    [url=http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/11/nyt-saddam-was-year-away-from-building.html]Gateway Pundit[/url] has a whole cartload of documents from the hoard which the NYT has selectively plucked a few anti-Bush leaflets, and demonstrated that the whole MSM agitprop campaign about Saddam having nothing to do with Al Qaeda is a raft of lies. And how does that true patriot elder statesman Wilson feel about his pronunciamento on the NYT Op-Ed page?

    Indeed, things are going badly in Iraq, but the overall MSM take on Iraq is also a tendentious factitious pile of balderdash—one-sided and dishonest to its core.

    The appeaser Dems are about ready to hijack the USS Free World and turn it into a multi-culti globalist welcome-wagon for terrorists.

    Maybe there’s still time for turning the big ship around, but I doubt it.

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