Nuclear Bomb in Iraq in 2002 & Wikipedia as a WMD (Website for Message Distribution)
There was a NY times story today on a webpage stating this:
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, 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 deletions, the diplomats said, had been done in consultation with the United States and other nuclear-weapons nations. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which ran the nuclear part of the inspections, told the Security Council in late 2002 that the deletions were “consistent with the principle that proliferation-sensitive information should not be released.
was on a web located here: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm. Interestingly, it has been taken down and wayback machine has nothing on it. Now the information was on the website back in April, but the NY Times brings it up today stating how it was irresponsible for this information to be allowed in the public. Perhaps that is so…
A couple related articles:
Today’s NY Times article
The Chicago Tribune’s take on the papers
A conservative blogger’s view on it: NY Times Story PROVES Saddam Was Making Nuclear Bomb
I’ve yet to judge the material, though I certainly can understand why it is being discussed this week. I’m interested in this from the geek aspect, because, to me, it is fascinating that this whole thing, which really just broke today, has already been covered over on WikiPedia. Wikipedia, a versioning tool, will keep all records of what was recorded here. Will wikipedia become a weapon in these political debates? What happen since wikipedia includes information that has been removed from a governmental site?
This is how Wikipedia summarizes the documents:
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