Everybody Loves The NYT Weapons Story

Over 80 blog articles are linked at memeorandum to today's NYT "November surprise" story on the Administration's posting of previously confidential Iraqi intelligence documents on the Web. Since those 80 are just the tip of the iceberg, this is a blogstorm of Category 5 strength.

On the Left, JohnKerryBlog has the typical Lefty reaction, which mimick's the NYT's: Who's a danger to our national security? They posit it's the GOP, as does the incorrectly named AMERICAblog, which challenges the GOP over the story:

I've got a question for every Republican member of Congress on the campaign trail. Were you involved in this plan to propagandize to the American people that was so shoddy, so forced, so haphazardly thrown together that you gave al Qaeda and every other bad guy the plans for how to nuke New York?

They miss -- or are running scared from -- the much greater significance of the story, that the American Left's acceptance of the NYT story confirms that they believe the documents on the Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal to be real, and to accurately reflect pre-war Iraqi programs and policies.

And that means all the reports we've seen at Capts. Quarters, Free Republic and elsewhere about what the documents reveal are now verified: assassination plots, ricin gas production, possible Saddam-bin Laden contacts (and for more, here), development of delivery methods for chemical and biological weapons, and using CNN as a "trusted news organization" to foil probes into the country's nuclear program. In other words:

• Yes, Saddam had an active WMD program and the will to use them, and
  
• No, Bush is not a liar.

These shocking admissions must be balanced this against the NYT/Lefty complaint -- that the GOP forced Bush to make the documents public over Negroponte's objections, and now terrorists might have gained access to plans for nukes.

We are to believe that the plans for nukes that Saddam bought from whomever he bought them from -- we know the info didn't come from Iraqi research -- aren't available to anyone with a buck and a whim? Iran, Pakistan and NoKo stand as evidence to an alternate reality: the ready availability of plans that should be secret.

At Belmont Club, it's all summed up well:

That America did not find an actual, ticking nuclear weapon in Iraq doesn't particularly mean anything in an era where design work, production and testing can be divided among anti-American allies. Even refrigerators are made that way today. The gleeful assertion that Saddam didn't "have" WMDs has slowly deligitimized any effort to rid the world of the malignant threat that is growing before its eyes.

Put another way, the Left is content to focus on slogans while the world needs leadership that focuses on real threats.

Related Tags: War on terror, Politics, Media bias, Document portal, Nuclear weapons, WMD