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 [bold mine-DL]. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

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Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war [bold mine-DL]. Experts say that at the time [bold mine-DL], Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

European diplomats said this week that some of those nuclear documents on the Web site were identical to the ones presented to the United Nations Security Council in late 2002, as America got ready to invade Iraq. But unlike those on the Web site, the papers given to the Security Council had been extensively edited, to remove sensitive information on unconventional arms. ~The New York Times

Most of the hysteria on the blog right (see here for a perfect example) has been based in a remarkable misreading of what the story says.  “Hussein was a year away from a nuke” is all that these folks can see, ignoring the bit about when he was a year away from having one.  When was it?  At the time of the Persian Gulf War.  In 1991.  Not three or four years ago.  These were 15-year old plans that never came to fruition, because of the inspections and disarmament regime that succeeded in disarming Iraq substantially by 1998 just as Scott Ritter, among others, had been saying for a couple years before the invasion.  The story ought to be considered a massive embarrassment for the administration, since it shows that a government initiative to show what the Iraqis had actually helped propagate information on building nuclear weapons that was hitherto not been publicly available even to representatives at the U.N. who were briefed about Iraqi WMD programs in recent years. 

In other words, to show to the world that the great war of disarmament that had come up dry was not in vain, our government provided, to anyone who bothered to look for it, important details on building a nuke.  That does strike me as being somewhere between criminally negligent and possibly retarded.

I do think it is entertaining that the blog right has given this story such enormous attention.  It is great how they have highlighted just how irresponsible and incompetent both the administration and key members of the GOP majority in Congress really are.