Wholesale Unseriousness mated with Criminal Negligence

U.S. shuts Web site said to reveal nuclear guide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration closed a government Web site set up to publicly display pre-war Iraqi documents on weapons of mass destruction after experts said its content included details for building a nuclear bomb, officials said on Friday.

The unclassified site was established by U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte in March under pressure from Republicans, who believed the captured documents would illustrate the dangers of Saddam Hussein during an election year marked by increasing voter disaffection over the Iraq war.

But Negroponte's office shut down the site, known as the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal," after the New York Times informed the Bush administration about expert concerns over posted accounts of Iraq's nuclear research before the 1991 Gulf War.

The New York Times, which broke the story late on Thursday, reported that the site's contents in recent weeks had begun to "constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb."

Negroponte's office said in a statement on Friday that it had suspended access to the site "pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing."

"The material currently on the Web site, as well as the procedures used to post new documents, will be carefully reviewed before the site becomes available again," the statement said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asked about the issue in a radio interview, suggested the controversy supported President George W. Bush's assertion that Saddam harbored dangerous nuclear ambitions before the March 2003 invasion.

"The interesting thing is that there clearly were an awful lot of nuclear documents floating around Iraq which suggest that this is someone who'd not given up on his ambitions," Rice said in the interview.

Yeah, she really said that. Here's another serious-minded patriot and public servant...

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and a leading proponent of the Iraq documents' release, said he welcomed the public discussion generated by the debate.

"This only reinforces the value of these documents in understanding the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime," he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, independent experts and diplomats expressed shock at the appearance of the material on a U.S. Web site...

Andy Dufresne, in The Shawshank Redemption, asked the warden "How can you be so obtuse?"

Upton Sinclair wrote "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Those guys are much cooler than me. All I have is joke, to keep me from crying or committing a felony:

STORE MANAGER: We were robbed!

POLICEMAN: Calm down, Sir. What happened?

MANAGER: When I got here this morning, the door was wide open, the place was ransacked.

POLICEMAN: The door looks pretty clean, I don't see prying or forced entry.

MANAGER: Of course not.

POLICEMAN: Huh?

MANAGER: We leave the door unlocked to prove how good our products are.

POLICEMAN: What business are you in?

MANAGER: We're the leading provider of security systems in the nation®.

©fouro2006 ;-)

In the end, I just know this must be Nancy Pelosi's fault. And Ted Kennedy was probably driving the getaway car. No doubt, it was a pink limousine with a case of condoms in the trunk and spare Turbans on the back seat in case Al Qaeda runs out. Vote Republican for real results and accountability. They KNOW national security.