The wingnuts are spinning today’s New York Times story as proof that Saddam Hussein’s regime was a clear nuclear threat.

Think Progress sets the record straight:

The Times report documents Iraq’s efforts to conduct nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war and prior to sanctions. Contrary to Bartlett’s claim, Iraq had no nuclear capability at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Here are the facts, as reported in the Key Findings of the Duelfer Report:

– “Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.”

– “Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.”

– “The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions.”

Digby flashes back to Rep. Pete Hoekstra’s original call to release the documents on the internet, and the rightwing blogosphere’s excitement:

Yeah. That worked out well.

Hoekstra had actually been agitating for releasing the documents for quite some time. In February, Instapundit reported:

“PAJAMAS MEDIA CORRESPONDENT Andrew Marcus interviews Rep. Peter Hoekstra about all those unread Iraqi WMD documents. Hoekstra suggests parceling them out to the blogosphere. Call in the Army of Davids!”

It looks like the ole perfesser and his pals didn’t realize that the Army of Davids might include a few soldiers of jihad. Ooopsie!