Tendentious

NEWS FLASH: THE DEMOCRATS HAVE FOUND WMDS...IN THE UAE!

I laughed out loud yesterday at news reports from the Teamster rally at the port of Newark yesterday where Democratic politicians railed at the UAE port deal. Senator Menendez warned darkly of the prospect of "radiological attacks" and Governor Corzine painted the terrifying picture for us:

the UAE has supported the Taliban government in Afghanistan and has allowed nuclear materials to be transported through its territory on the way to rogue nations.

Oh my, now that is serious. Nuclear materials! Wow.

So, being the concerned citizen I am, I looked up the background of this claim, and, sure enough, I found, among other stories, this two-year-old USA Today piece that linked Dubai with the AQ Khan nuclear technology transfer story. And who was the Khan network's first customer? Surprise, surprise: It was Saddam's Iraq.

Khan apparently came across a blueprint for an atomic bomb when working with the CERN project in Switzerland and Germany in the mid-80s. Fresh investigations reveal that "the same blueprint was available with Iraq months after it was known to have come in Khan’s possession", a senior MEA official said.

A "nuclear trigger" device also surfaced in Iraq soon after it was officially known that Khan had picked it up from CERN and returned to Pakistan. "The technological similarity of the blueprint and trigger possessed by Iraq and the ones picked up by Khan is overwhelming," a MEA expert said. He reasons that “Since no Western country shared or sold them to Iraq at any point of time, Khan seems to the only possible source for Iraq."

So let's get our story straight: Bush lied about Iraq seeking or having WMDs, except when the UAE is involved, in which case they're all going to end up in Newark.