Ari Fleischer Quotes
We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about.
Fleischer, Ari. "Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer." The White House, 10 Apr. 2003.
This quotation represents a colossal failure of politicians to understand science and the way that it works. They assumed that the processes and methods were secrets that if kept secret, would prevent others from constructing an atomic bomb. The reality was that the most important “secrets” had emanated from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and other published scientific papers. So any competent physicist knew immediately how the bomb worked. A triggering mechanism would need to be developed but that was just a complicated engineering project. The largest barrier was the supply of enough radioactive material with sufficient purity. That then (as today) took a lot of money and some time. But after the initial bomb, the secrets might speed things up but were not necessary. That is why the French and the Russians quickly developed their bombs, and why it did not take the Israelis long once the had decided to invest the resources. China, India and Pakistan did not need the secrets either when much later, they decided to develop nuclear weapons. With the atomic bomb, spying and obtaining secrets shorten the required time and reduce the cost, but are not necessary. This is why nuclear proliferation is so hard to stop.
Lawrence Ari Fleischer is an American media consultant and political aide who served as the twenty-first White House Press Secretary, for President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003.