Where did Iraq learn its nuclear-weapons skills? (Score 1)

Fascinating how the New York Times manages to fill the whole article, on the front- and continuation pages, discussing who released the documents, etc. and never explains who taught Iraq how to build atom bombs. As the article says:

...the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Iraq was indeed dangerous before the war: the first Gulf war in 1991. A suspicious reader might, perhaps, wonder where Iraq learnt advanced techniques of bomb construction. A likely source would be the country with the most nuclear weapons:

In one of the more stunning incidents, in September 1989, just one year before the Iraqi military stormed over the Kuwaiti border, U.S. military officials invited several Iraqi technicians to attend a "detonation conference" at the Red Lion Inn in Portland, Ore.

The conference -- the Ninth Symposium (International) on Detonation, was a crash course from the world's experts on how to detonate a nuclear weapon. Among the named sponsors of the conference were the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Armament Laboratory, the Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, the Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Naval Sea Systems Command, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Office of Naval Technology and Sandia National Laboratories, according to the conference proceedings. [Source: "Made in America", San Francisco Bay Guardian, 25 Feb 1998]

Fun trivia: Who was president of the United States in September 1989?

No doubt, the New York Times just did not know of the above highly secret information, because it was first revealed only on the floor of the US House of Representatives. See the Statement of Henry B. Gonzalez, Chairman, House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs, "Bush Administration had Acute Knowledge of Iraq's Military Industrialization Plans," July 27, 1992.

I tip my hat to the New York Times, masters of 'free'-world propaganda.