The Mandelbear's Musings

The persistent delusions of senior Republicans in Congress and the President have led to the leaking of sensitive documents on nuclear weapons via the Web, the New York Times reports.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (Republican, Michigan), and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (Republican, Kansas) were instrumental in establishing a Web archive called the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal". It was Hoekstra's, Roberts's, and apparently the President's, hope that by disseminating documents recovered from Iraq, some right-wing amateur researcher might eventually find a flaky shred of evidence suggesting that Saddam's regime had been involved in banned weapons production, which could then be trumpeted to the press.

The problem with clinging to vain hopes in this way is that a number of the documents (since removed) were believed to be far too graphic in describing nuclear weapons technology to be suitable for public exhibition.