From the AP:
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What’s now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad – using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
“Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq,” said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.
Now, before you dull, neocon chickenhawk dupes (whose gullibility encouraged smarter and more discriminating Dem congresspeople to set aside their concerns and their principles and vote us overwhelmingly into a fake war based on the lying lies of lying liars who lied) get to feeling all vindicatey, please note that yellowcake itself — even 550 metric tons of the stuff — is not, without further enrichment, capable of causing anything more than a panic. And Saddam was far too busy writing romance novels and terrorizing Kurds and Marsh Arabs to even dream about further enriching the stuff.
My guess? He was just keeping it around in case Joe Wilson ever lipped off to him. Then he’d be all like, “you’ve been punk’d!”
So, you know, no harm, no foul.
In fact, I’m not sure what business it is of ours to worry about such a benign stockpile of harmless fluff. Perhaps if we spent less time removing 550 metric tons of yellowcake from the middle east and more time concentrating on the global warming climate change crisis and the rising cost of oil (and no, advocating for additional drilling, new refineries, and nuclear energy do NOT count as viable methods of amelioration, you greedy earth-gorging eco-robber barons), poor people who don’t give a flying fig about Iraq wouldn’t be forced to buy sub-standard arugula on the black market of color.
Get with the program, pigs. YES YOU CAN!
(h/t N.O. Brain)
hmmm….i was watchin FOXnews when they went into Tuwaitha …do you membah Jeff? the huge snowstorm that pinned us denverites into our homes?
All we could do was watch the Dash Across the Desert on FOX.
that was before I discovered the blogverse.
i remember discussion of yellowcake and radioactive signature that was shushed and redacted.
betcha someone lost their Q-clearance over that.
;)
Oh, now, Jeff, Saddam was such a rational actor that I can’t believe he would ever have contemplated doing anything naughty with the yellowcake. It’s not like he ever gassed anyone with illegal-by-the-GC gas, or anything.
Pshaw. Its only little biddy metric tons. Nothing to see here….
Yellowcake again, eh?
It takes thousands of centrifuges running 24/7.
I got these grapeseeds from my local nursery. The guy says I’ll have some grapes in 2-3 years. Then I can make some wine. Within only five years I can get drunk and kill somebody with my car.
I am an imminent threat.
If you’ve been banned from having, grape seeds, then yes, Cleo you are.
That’s really retarded. Disinformation, really. The Iranian nuclear program proceeds apace.
Soooo… all this was kept hush-hush so that the Islamofascist, explosive belt wearing freaks wouldn’t try and track the stuff down while it was on their turf? And not revealing it in response to deranged proggtards unceasing and catchy protest chants at the cost of massive approval ratings? How is the backpedaling/tapdancing going to play out on this one?
Forget that many were agitating for the sanctions on Iraq to be lifted, giving Saddam rein to reconstitute whatever enrichment equipment he’d ordered buried in rose gardens.
Nothing to see here. He was likely just keeping the shit around to bolster his nuclear street cred. Like when I used to carry a switchblade that was really a comb in the third grade.
Fonzi, he made a real impression on me.
Does anyone know Joe Wilson’s recipe for yellowcake?
Grape seeds are powerful antioxidants, you idiot. They also can help you with cholesterol. If you want to grow grapes, you buy either rooted vines from the nursery of you take cuttings from somewhere else and root them yourself. Usually from vines within your state cause there’s all sorts of rules about transporting them. God you’re stupid.
*or* you take cuttings I mean.
Does anyone know Joe Wilson’s recipe for yellowcake?
Maybe Bobby Flay will do a Throwdown episode!
I do! Take 550 metric tons of low grade uranium. Ignore. Deny its existence.
Yield: One Vanity Fair Cover! Serves: whatever the fuck his self-centered agenda happens to be.
So… this is or isn’t the original yellowcake from ’91? Or is it from Niger? I think the article is a bit unclear with very few people willing to lay their names on the line. Maybe kind of circumspect, but also a bit suspicious.
I mean, if this is some big shit breaking news, how come no one in the gov’t wants to step up and take credit? It’s done, right? Success, right? I mean, how come Bush or someone from the administration isn’t going the moonwalk and pointing fingers at all the assholes who didn’t know about this operation.
Sorry, in spite of everything Jeff G wrote – with which I both agree and was amused – I just find this story and its release on one of the Twilight Zone weekends for news and all a bit suspicious. Oh, yeah, not to forget, coming from AP.
In my day the media was better. Word of this sort of thing would have never gotten out.
I actually agree, jdm. That no one is touting this is a bit worrying — though maybe we’ve just reached the point where Bushco is content to win the fucking war, and let history take care of the crowing, should Iraq become an object lesson for those with dreams of a Caliphate and a US Paper Tiger.
Yeah, why no “mission accomplished” banner? The Bush administration should have told the NYT and Al Jezeera when it left Iraq. That makes the most sense, doesn’t it?
“though maybe we’ve just reached the point where Bushco is content to win the fucking war”
or as Wretchard puts it:
“All in all, the incoming administration will inherit a winning, but not a won hand in the region. Whether it holds up or folds up is up to them.”
hey, Master, if u have a sec, could u plz check my intentionalism on Jefferson’s “Last Letter” on Aldo’s post at the pub?
ty
;)
I think the third paragraph explains why no one’s touting this.
The AP would be more than happy to explore environmental problems associated with uranium, and there’s really no upside to encouraging that. See here for example. No. McCain’s got the baton, and I suspect he’d rather talk about nuclear energy here at home without “radioactive debris” in the news. But maybe I’m overthinking it.
Publishing it now is the equivalent of AP muttering under its breath. Posting it on blogs is the same as saying, “Whats that you say, Mumbles?” Next up: “Oh, THATS what the big deal was? pfft.”
no banner and no hype, because it’s old news and not really a big deal. Unfortunately.
It absolutely should be an indication that nuclear ambitions and capcities were a part of the Sadam-era mix. But the quantity is insufficient to really represent a program. 550 tonnes is about that needed to produce on warhead–if you already know the ins and outs of production. Research would require significantly more.
The al-Tuaitha site was a known center for nuclear research. The US has already done other nuclear material evacuation from there and this particualr quantity was known and inventoried by the IAEA previously.
The guy says I’ll have some grapes in 2-3 years. Then I can make some wine. Within only five years I can get drunk and kill somebody with my car.
Sure, because there’s absolutely no difference in controlling a madman with a completed nuclear bomb and wino with a bottle of Mogen David.
It takes thousands of centrifuges running 24/7
Not to make a dirty bomb, it doesn’t.
Moron.
Why is it that the left always seems to remind me of the idiot mad scientist who wants to snuggle up with the monster and, in the process, is eaten?
Except why do they so rarely seem to be eaten by monsters? I guess movies really aren’t like reality after all.
They snuggled up to ethanol and actually decreased the eating. It’s sort of a paradox.
Is Joe Wilson an the Val gal goin’ get some of this yellowcake.
Is Joe Wilson an the Val gal goin’ get some of this yellowcake.
Yeah, right after they find the report he submitted.
SPB,
Yellowcake is not a very good candidate for a dirty bomb. At worst it’d raise a lot of alarms and extra precautions in the responders until they found out what it was, but it wouldn’t create a persistent radiological problem.
I think the bit that got me was “last remnant.” Which suggests there were other remnants. Which suggests that the raw material was available for a nuclear program. Which suggests that, had sanctions been lifted, that was Saddam’s plan. Which suggests that they were indeed harboring nuclear ambitions. Which suggests that they were, in fact, a threat — even if they were simply to foist this stuff off on terror types who, doing what they do, would use it to spread terror. Which requires nothing more, really, than the combination of “nuclear” or “uranium” and “bomb” or “explosion.”
Nuclear holocaust? No. But if a bomb loaded with uranium went off near a certain Brazilian cabana, you can bet your ass there’d be less squawking about “civil liberties” with respect to the NSA datamining program.
Which is ironic.
I got these grapeseeds from my local nursery.
Try to buy a thousand pounds of fertilizer, let me know how it goes.
George Bush wouldn’t know a competent PR effort if it walked up to him and sold him a set of breast implants and a ’73 Gremlin.
Try to buy a thousand pounds of fertilizer, let me know how it goes.
Couldn’t we just bag congress?
slightly OT, but I wonder if this is just the angle to get liberals pissed off at Iran as their complicity in killing American soldiers leave them numb
Nah. The Liberals won’t give a toot about the Monkey’s as long as their being mutilated by a fanatical brutal regime. Kites.
Except why do they so rarely seem to be eaten by monsters?
Oh, they do, they do.
Couldn’t we just bag congress?
You could, maybe even should, but Ammonium sulfate doesn’t stink the place up.
Comment by Semanticleo on 7/6 @ 11:12 am #
Do you speak English?
Och, thankee, Jeff.
[doffs cap, tugs at forelock]
“Comment by Merovign on 7/6 @ 1:02 pm #
Why is it that the left always seems to remind me of the idiot mad scientist who wants to snuggle up with the monster and, in the process, is eaten?
Except why do they so rarely seem to be eaten by monsters?”
Soviet Union
Show trials.
I got these grapeseeds from my local nursery
Also, grapes aren’t grown from seeds.
Add agriculture to the apparently limitless list of topics of which you are brutally ignorant.
RTO:
“Yellowcake is not a very good candidate for a dirty bomb. At worst it’d raise a lot of alarms and extra precautions in the responders until they found out what it was, but it wouldn’t create a persistent radiological problem.”
I respectfully disagree. You know and I know enough engineering and/or physics to process a technically literate news account and to formulate a response for ourselves and our family.
Problem is, any detonation in a western urban area that features measurable radioactivity is going to be initially reported as an event somewhere on the far, far, beyond the fucking fence far away limit that Katrina lives beyond in the lore of disaster reporting. It’s just that simple.
The primary motivation for using a dirty bomb is psychological, anyway. Since AP/Reuters/CNN/NYT etc already do every thing in their power to AID and COMFORT the people likely to go the dirty bomb route I look for nothing short of unadulterated panic, stoked by the pre-planned graphics packages living in cans and on servers at every major media outfit in the country. The unavoidable spice to the mix will be the utter incoherence of 99% of the talking heads when it comes to matters radiological.
Their whole existence is built on “nuke = BAD”; they’ve gotten on quite well as highly paid luddites. That history (and the unavoidable effects on the population) will, emphatically WILL, bite us in the ass when we have to deal with such an event.
I’m all for Utah accepting nuclear waste. Not because I’ll make a dime off it (directly) but instead because the STATE will make a mint on any reasonable permitting/fee process of the business.
The technology is turnkey, and the waste we are looking at accepting is basically watch-face level of contamination.
We won’t do it, though. Our state government, and governor, would look sillier than California’s if people bothered to look twice at what has happened to regulation, spending, and accountability the last decade or so.
Show trials.
Indeed. The useful idiots never stop to wonder what happens when they’re no longer useful.
Hint to the TroggLosers, Kathys, and Semencleos of the world: after the revolution, revolutionaries are no longer required.
The 9MM solution.
seman and FascistZero are always the ilk that get dragged down into the basement and shot in the back of the head.
Yup.
To one part bullshit, add two parts dissembling.
Stir well, and send to the New York Times.
Hmmmm… guess I shouldn’t comment when in the throes of a summer cold.
Just ignore all after “… deal with such an event.” and pretend I put something up on topic…
jdm,
If you haven’t noticed, Bush is averse to taking credit for, or explaining, anything. One of his biggest flaws, as far as I can see.
It has always pissed me off that he lets the left and the drive bys tap dance on his face. He has always refused to defend himself, much to the chagrin of the Conservatives.
HF,
Is that why I’m so hungry?
Add agriculture to the apparently limitless list of topics of which you are brutally ignorant.
To be fair, I don’t know all that much about growing grapes either (even though I live in the Raisin Capitol of the World!), but it’s not necessary for the analogy. Semen was trying to say we were trying to take circumstances to extremes, like judging a harmless seed buyer as a drunk driver.
The truer analogy is we are judging someone as a potential bomb maker, similar to the attention paid to a guy with a back yard garden and a handful of seeds, the hand not missing fingers from a bomb experiment gone bad that is, attempting to get a ton of Ammonium sulfate fertilizer.
Not quite the stretch semen imagines.
And, BTW. Now I know what ObamaLamaDingDong meant when he said we can’t just consume anything we want. It’s because we are going to burn our food in our cars – courtesy of government order!
I’m starving too. I think it’s all this yellowcake talk, but really what I’m craving are anchovies. I think I’ll do anchovy pasta tonight.
– feets, I don’t think anchovy pasta yellowcake cupcakes would be a winner, but your mileage may vary.
Comment by happyfeet on 7/6 @ 2:14 pm #
That’s just perverse.
I got a roast beef in the slow cooker.
What kind of taties, tho?
Tim,
Excellent points. I guess I ought to know better. My mother was convinced for years that if you stood in front of the microwave whre the fan was blowing that you’d be irradiated. And that was after the years it took to get her to consider having one in the house.
As such I have a soft spot for Luddites and consider myself a crypto-Luddite–the tehcnho-guy who insists that his troops know how to actually read a map and work the problems out by stubby pencil method.
Rather than a sack of grapeseed, perhaps think of a load of castor beans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/us/03ricin.html?fta=y
N O’Brain–I’ve got a Pork Shoulder Roast going that’ll be ready in an hour or so. Darn–I was just at the store–I should have got some Hogie rolls for after I shred it and subject it to the Cider Vinegar barbecue sauce.
Hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide, and acetone.
I’m probably not gonna do the pasta. I really have no enthusiasm for cooking lately. And also my kitchen is really clean and I have no dishes to do and I think I’ll just pick something up at Ralph’s cause I have to go anyway cause I’m about out of cigarettes.
Oh. You should have at least done a few tatie thingers in the slow cooker with the beef. However many would fit. Maybe some carrots too. Really. That would have been a lot foresightful I think. Now you have beef but no taties, which is really not where you wanted to be right now.
To be fair, I don’t know all that much about growing grapes either
I don’t actually have much interest in being fair to Semen.
550 Tons of Some Unknown Material that is Most Definitely, Absolutely, Positively Not Yellowcake Uranium Just Arrived in Canada from Iraq….
Let’s go back in time a bit, to 2003. Remember the infamous “16 words” from the President’s 2003 State of the Union Address? The left seized on the words as a lie and a fable and proof that the President was “cherry pickin…
– I’m not cooking, and I’m not going to grow anything. I used the cell, and in a few minutes a giant pizza is going to “grow” on my kitchen table, curtesy of Rosa’s. Its the weekend, and I intend to kick back and watch the Pad’s kick some ass.
– The Proggs will still be brain dead and hiding the yellowcake tomorrow.
Carrots are in.
It’s mashed taties.
With brown gravy.
Did anybody see that match at Wimbleton? Friggin’ amazing.
“As such I have a soft spot for Luddites and consider myself a crypto-Luddite–the tehcnho-guy who insists that his troops know how to actually read a map and work the problems out by stubby pencil method.”
Bless you sir.
Next time you get a chance, do an untrained observer (live fire), to cap off your landnav exercise. I have always believed that if Joe private can operate a PTT switch, he ought to have more than a clue on how to call for help. And who. You just never know when it will come in handy.
I have a BlUEberry (you have to see the look on the tech help folks when a fat bearded trog walks up and says “My BLUEberry is acting up”. More entertainment value than a Saturday matinée.) with the ‘net, email, camera, and some third-party cell-triangulation utility installed. I hate the dependency I have come to have for it.
BUT I appreciated the advantages it brings to the table, so I guess I’ll just resolve to pay more attention and resist just ringing up a map.
Either way though, I’m sure glad we got rid of Saddam Hussein and freed all those people even if Baracky thought it was more better to leave Saddam Hussein alone. Sometimes I think Baracky puts loyalty ahead of doing the right thing, which is admirable, but I think in this case it wasn’t the best policy really.
– Things to make your day:
– “….the UAE announced today they will forgive a 7 trillion dollar debt they have held for the Iraqi’s, and ratchet up their efforts to help the Iraqi’s develop their oil production and refineries. Now maybe Maliki can afford that CD box set of Beverly Hillbillys.
….up from the ground a bubblin’ crude….black gold…..Texas tea….oil that is.
Why is it that the left always seems to remind me of the idiot mad scientist who wants to snuggle up with the monster and, in the process, is eaten?
Like the reporter said in an earlier story:
“The couple said they approached the Johnsons to learn about Satanism, but they did not consent to the beatings and rape.”
“the UAE announced today they will forgive a 7 trillion dollar debt”
WAM said the debt was $4 billion not including interest. A UAE official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media said the total debt was $7 billion when interest was added.
Iraq has been appealing for relief of at least $67 billion in foreign debt  owed mostly to Arab nations that have been reluctant to forgive Iraq’s belligerence during Saddam Hussein’s regime.
It can be admirable, hf. Depends if the expense is your own.
The Lightbringer forgives your impertinence, Dan. This time. Be mindful. There are limits even to His magnanimity.
– “A few billion here, a few billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money” – Newt Gingrich
I don’t actually have much interest in being fair to Semen.
I understand. I was just trying to focus on semens relevant ignorance.
It never hurts to point out his collateral ignorance of course.
“Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 7/6 @ 3:15 pm #”
With value of the dollar being what it is it may well be 7 trill now.
Hah. Just joshing you Dan. His magnanimity is limitless. But you knew that.
It never hurts to point out his collateral ignorance of course.
Unless you get the carpal-tunnel syndrome of course. I hear that hurts.
But also at least Democrats still have their sense of humor. Hah! Have a bake sale! Teh funny!
Taties make me fat.
TmjUtah, Good idea. Especially on a timed course, where, if we’ve done it right they’ll be tired and out of breath too.
We all know that Iraq was building the Osirak reactor which Israel destroyed 27 years ago. If you check the location, you will find that it was located at Tuwaitha, precisely where this Uranium was located. Is there any reason to suspect that this yellowcake was not part of the Osirak complex?
cleo
550 metric tons of uranium oxide can produce about 2 tons of refined uranium. All the hard work had already been done all that is needed today is time and money. So.
Given Saddams past performance what do you suppose the future of that yellowcake would have been?
Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: “I think we’re at the irreversible point.â€Â
[…] more fun read Protein Wisdom’s take on the story, Chimpy McHitlerburton’s smirky rodeo ride through history, 25: the last slice of Saddam cake e…. Share this Logic Bomb with others: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers […]
[…] protein wisdom: Now, before you dull, neocon chickenhawk dupes (whose gullibility encouraged smarter and more discriminating Dem congresspeople to set aside their concerns and their principles and vote us overwhelmingly into a fake war based on the lying lies of lying liars who lied) get to feeling all vindicatey, please note that yellowcake itself  even 550 metric tons of the stuff  is not, without further enrichment, capable of causing anything more than a panic. And Saddam was far too busy writing romance novels and terrorizing Kurds and Marsh Arabs to even dream about further enriching the stuff. […]
[…] Press: (hand over mouthpiece: Oh, crap, he’s making victory noises about Iraq and bringing up the yellowcake again! We have to think fast! Can’t be reporting that George W. Bush saved the world on the eve of […]
What a beautiful soliloquy!
Love the weasely trackback from “Pirate’s Cove”.
Hint: You’ve just admitted that you were wrong.
Hint #2: The war in Iraq is virtually over.
Hint #3: Your side lost.
And of course, he doesn’t explain why, if Saddam “And Saddam was far too busy…to even dream about further enriching the stuff” he had 550 tons of the “stuff” on-hand.
He liked to sprinkle it on his Cheerios, maybe?
It must really suck to see your entire worldview crumbling around your ears, huh?
Ummm. SBP. Pirate’s Cove is quoting Jeff there. The Blogger, there, William Teach, is no our side. I’d e-mail, rather than post, but I don’t have that information.
Whoops! My bad.
Time to adjust my sarcasm detector, I think.
Sorry, Pirate’s Cove.
Sorry folks, this was leftover from an era when Iraq was our friend.
The UN knew about it.
The US knew about it.
http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/SV/Invo/factsheet.html#indigenous
As for Valerie Plame,Joe Wilson and the NYT…..”let them eat Yellowcake” !
However, you are all still idiots. sez the Jesse Taylor, uber feminist with a penis [alleged], of pandagon
#89 Darleen
Shorter Jesse Taylor: Nya-nya-nya!
Sheesh.
One could write a post-graduate thesis on the Neoteny of the Internet Left.
I had some yellow cake as a kid; hope I didn’t breath any.
It’s yellower than yellow, almost florescent or neon.
Cool stuff, really sets off a scintillation counter.
This situation is a lot like them mobile chemical weapons labs and WMDs.
No. This is a precedent really. A new model of effective nonproliferation. Bush is that fucking cool.
You mean like this, Feets?
That’s only 5 years old. If you click the Proliferation Security Initiative Participants link you’ll see how much the Chimperor has us “going alone” on it too.
But if a bomb loaded with uranium went off near a certain Brazilian cabana, you can bet your ass there’d be less squawking about “civil liberties†with respect to the NSA datamining program.
“Why couldn’t they CONNECT THE DOTS??!!”
Yeah, like that too, RTO. But the part where the peoples with the nuclear thingies actually help load things on planes for the people who killed their former leader person is kind of new and special all by itself I think. It’s so neat when a plan comes together.
It’s like a classic half-pincer movement inside a guarded perimeter.
jeff, you are the wind beneath my wings!
Conspicuously missing:
“Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.”
Everyone knew about this material before the war. The notion that it’s some sort of WMD or justification for the whole disaster is nonsense.
“My guess? He was just keeping it around in case Joe Wilson ever lipped off to him…”
My guess is is that the IAEA left that material (and other stuff) in Iraq after the 1991 campaign so that the Baathists could regain possession of it once the sanctions were lifted, and then use it to restart their nuclear weapons programs.
Unfortunately (from their POV), a serious lack of Baathists in Iraq plus our capture of the materials makes that scenario a null possibility.
Well, perhaps the IAEA will have more luck in Iran.
Comment by pan on 7/7 @ 1:42 am #
Conspicuously missing:
Everyone knew about this material before the war.”
But Bush lied.
Conspicuously missing:
“The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam’s nuclear efforts,…”
I think this is the stuff that the Army found(ours) that the IAEA had no idea existed. So in acuality he had a couple of thousand tons of the stuff. Coulda painted every goddamn building in Iraq a nice yella color.
“I think this is the stuff that the Army found(ours) that the IAEA had no idea existed. So in acuality he had a couple of thousand tons of the stuff. Coulda painted every goddamn building in Iraq a nice yella color.”
You people are priceless!
It was in several IAEA reports from the 90s.
It was sitting in barrels with IAEA seals on them.
They had inspected as recently as a month before we went in and again 3 months before that.
But they didn’t know about it.
‘They had inspected as recently as a month before we went in and again 3 months before that.’
President Bush didn’t lie.
# 104,ff.
It is a lost cause. Nothing is going to convince this crowd here about Iraq war. Give it up…. They are either:
1. too stupid
2 too brainwashed
3 too invested in the BS,
4 or psychologically have built the wall , which helps them sleep at night and shield themselves from the regular nightmares of dead for nothing American soldiers and many innocent Iraqis from their consciousness…
That’s why the meaningless story about KNOWN SINCE THE 90TH AND SECURED by UN URANIUM GETS THEM SO EXCITED.
“Wow, now I can justify to my guilty conscience all those dead who knock on my brain at night”,
or may be they do no experience this for the lack of thereof
Curious absence of a citation on that claim.
I guess if we just left now everything would be peachy eh sasha?
Sashal, STFU. Please, just STFU and GTFA.
nobody is leaving just now, O’K?
More facts:
Remember folks how upon hearing mentions that Saddam might have sought low grade (‘yellowcake’) uranium from Niger, no one sees fit to mention immediately that Iraq already possessed tons of uranium.
If you feared that one day Saddam might possess nuclear weaponry, it wasn’t a lack of uranium but a lack of technology which hindered the program, and then it was forcibly shut down.
In fact, in 1981 and 1982, Iraq had already imported from Niger 300 tons of yellowcake uranium.
From the IAEA’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office
Indigenous production and overt procurement of uranium compounds
* Imported 4,006 kg of natural uranium and 6,005 kg of depleted uranium (DU) from Italy in 1979
* Imported 1,767 kg low enriched uranium (LEU) from Italy in 1982
* Imported almost 50 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Russia and France
* Procured 429 drums containing 138,098 kg yellowcake from Portugal in 1980
* Procured 487 drums containing 148,348 kg yellowcake from Portugal in 1982
* Procured 432 drums containing 137,435 kg of yellowcake from Niger in 1981
* Procured 426 drums containing 139,409 kg of yellowcake from Niger in 1982
* Imported 24,260 kg of uranium dioxide from Brazil between 1981-82
* Produced 109 tonnes of uranium in 168 tonnes of yellowcake at Al Qaim uranium recovery plant, which was constructed between 1982-84
* Produced 420 drums containing 99,457 kg uranium dioxide at Al Jesira uranium conversion facility
* Produced UF6 at Rashdiya Engineering and Design Centre
* Processed uranium dioxide to produce UF4, uranium metal and UF6 at Tuwaitha Chemical Laboratories
* Processed UO2 and yellowcake to produce UO2, U3O8, UO3, UO4, UF4, and uranium metal at Tuwaitha
* Experimental Research Laboratory for Fuel Fabrication
* Processed UO2 to produce UCl4 at Tuwaitha Chemical Engineering Research laboratories
# 106
It is a lost cause. Nothing is going to convince
this crowd herethe anti-war left and Sashal about Iraq war. Give it up…. They are either:1. too stupid
2 too brainwashed
3 too invested in the BS,
4 or psychologically have built the wall of BDS which refuses to take IN information and incorporate it in any meaningful way.
“Wow, Saddam was a GREAT guy and so he killed his own people, and fed women to his pet Dogs, but you gotta break a few eggs, right? It was really none of our business … and he posed ABSOLUTELY NO threat to anyone (but his own people) and affected the stability of the ME not at ALL.”
Before ff11, sashal and pan drown in their own self-righteousness (no one here wants that on their conscience) I’d like to point out that, first, the same points have already been made (IOW: the cow’s been sold, your bull is not required) and, second, Rob Crawford’s on exatly the right track–the article that inspired the post is yet another example of supremely crappy journalism. I say crappy as opposed to biased. Had it been biased, the writer would surely have adopted the ff11/sashal/pan tone and put us all in our place from the very start. In this case it’s a simple matter of incompetence to have missed the opportunity for self-satisfied snark while being factual.
These three should step off–preferably into heavy traffic.
RTO Trainer. I suggest you rephrase your point (if you have one) in English. Are you saying the original article is misleading? Do you question the senior US official cited in the following paragraph:
sraeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
What are you trying to say exactly? Come out and say it instead of hiding behind innuendo.
Carin, someday you will grow to be ashamed of your position, I know that. Can’t say it about others here….
ff11: feigning ignorance (or maybe he really can’t read)
Sashal: feigning moral superiority
pan: AWOL
Great.
Yes sashal, we know you wish the rape rooms and plastic shredders were still in operation. Do yourself a favor and feel just a little bad about that position.
Ok, strike that last. I doubt very much sasha was for those things.
Edu Guy – He may very well not have been for those things, but the policies he advocates would have allowed them to still be in existence.
JD – Yeah, I know. In any case, it’s far too late now. What’s done is done and those still arguing about whether we should have invaded or not seem to me to be hopelessly stuck in the past.
Sashal et al.
Barn door, horses running, etc.
Actually, ff11, RTO is saying he already made the point you three keep making about this particular stockpile earlier in the comments. You know, as part of teh ECHO CHAMBER.
And I responded to him, noting that what I was interested in was the “last major remnant” bit — and the fact that it is now out of the middle east, and not available to those who might use it to, you know, cause terror.
In other words, RTO is suggesting that you read the thread before you chime in, lest you wind up looking idiotic. Kinda like Sashal, who will grab on to anyone he can for support, all in dramatic fashion, the back of his hand over his forehead in a kind of histrionic pre-faint.
Very needy, it is.
I was getting the impression that “looking idiotic” was ff11’s goal.
Carin, someday you will grow to be ashamed of your position, I know that. Can’t say it about others here….
Hope springs eternal, Sashal.
There’s no way really this is not a good thing. I’ve looked at it every which way and I just can’t see how it’s not good news. Maybe I need to step back.
This is only my observation, and granted, it probably dovetails with only about 95% of people with any sense, but as Bush looks more right with each passing day, sasha gets more of an eye-twitch in his writing.
No, you’re dead on, alp. The fact that we’re hearing it spoken (and seeing it written) as such a complete historical given that Iraq was a failure, and a needless expenditure of lives and treasure, is proof that the wagons are being circled.
The (to me, at least) clear subtext of this post is that Iraq is beginning to look much differently than it did under Saddam and his thugs, and that it is, as a potential base for terrorist enabling against the west, is increasingly unwelcoming.
Inspections, seals, age of yellowcake, etc. — all that is window dressing. The fact is, the US and its allies have removed a potential threat, and have, the hope is, begun to change the political climate in the region. Unfortunately, much of the good work might be in jeopardy thanks to an electorate under sway of a disingenuous media and those who pander to it (and to whom it panders).
For whatever reason, some Americans express their patriotism by insisting that the US is the wellspring of all global ill, and so they constantly seek to undermine its policies to teach it humility — the irony being that they don’t recognize the hubris in their own self-important finger wagging.
Fuck ’em.
Yes, Jeff (ECHO … Echo … echo …) but even more annoying and unserious is the attempt to apply the “Fruit of the Tainted Tree” evidenciary concept to anything that comes out of Iraq.
First; one is required to accept the proposition that Saddam and the thug children were contained, isolated and under control. Pilots dodging missiles in the no fly zones, relatives of victims of Saddam enriched suicide bombers, Oil for Food scandals and a gazillion ignored UN resolutions say otherwise but wehatever.
Second; one must then accept that the entire Iraq adventure was not just ill advised or premature but wholly unwarranted and the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of TEH CIVILIZATION!!11 AND ILLEGAL!!!11
Thus, ipso fact, quod erat demonstratum, nana nana boo-boo, anything and everything that might be good, or wise or prudent that flows out of Iraq is the stinking, rotted fruit of the Bushitler tainted tree of dumass and is thus irrelevant to BLOOD FOR OIL, BUSH LIED, BROWN PEOPLE DIED.
I’m perfectly willing to have a reasonable debate with sashal, et al about the eternal “Was it worth it?” but am denied by the absolutism of nothing matters !!11QUAGMIRE TO INFINITY!!11
“Your honor, we ask you to toss out any celebration of:
The joy of Iraqi freedom, the deaths of the three Hussein monsters, three free elections, an emerging democracy in a theocratic/dictatorial region, the pounding of al qaeda and the deaths of several jihadist thug leaders, the cancellation of Iraq’s debt and the long term consequences for the middle east of all of the above…
because they all flow from the tainted fruit of the tainted McChimpy Imperialistic Cowboy School of Empire Builders™.
No, sashal, someday you will be ashamed, either of being so breathtakingly partisan about any success or of the dire consequences of cutting and running.
I concede that RTO Trainer noted that this story does not have anything to do with Joe Wilson or some dangerous cache of WMD. Of course that still didn’t stop him, or the rest of you, from jumping on board and patting themselves on the back and piling on the media for publishing the story.
In fact Rob Crawford was questioning the validity of the whole IAEA report as late as post 107 and he wasn’t the only one, so pardon me for not believing that my reminder was misplaced!
Interestingly, this whole thread was brought on by your side, not by myself or Sahal. Yet somehow you don’t see yourselves as living in the past.
Interestingly, this whole thread was brought on by your side, not by myself or Sahal. Yet somehow you don’t see yourselves as living in the past.
Try to keep up. No war = Saddam still has that Uranium. War = no more Saddam, and Uranium relocated to Canada.
I think my impression is panning out pretty well.
That settles that. ff11 is illiterate.
Insults? That’s the best you can do?
“Try to keep up. No war = Saddam still has that Uranium. War = no more Saddam, and Uranium relocated to Canada.”
Not quite.
No war = Uranium in sealed drums. War = Villagers dumping out the uranium and using the contaminated drums for water.
Because he was contained! Am I right or am I right?
No war = Uranium in sealed drums. War = Villagers dumping out the uranium and using the contaminated drums for water.
……..which they gather from the broken sewage lines. In order to get their yellow cake drums to the water, they must climb over piles of bodies from Uday and Qusay’s latest mass execution of people who were complaining about the lack of clean water.
fun game
[…] Taylor (erstwhile conductor of the muscular Jerry Springer political freight train): I bow to you, Jeff Goldstein. You have redefined correctitude in my eyes, other random conservatives. American Thinker, you […]
Ah. f11 is of the “they were contained, so glad I ain’t a Marsh Arab, sucks for those poor bastards” school.
Whatever. My follow-up post is here, for those interested. As for “living in the past,” the AP story notes – and I suppose I should write this slowly, with the hope that perhaps some of you here will do me the kindness of reading it slowly until you’ve understood it – that the “last remnant” has now been removed.
Meaning, this is a current story — one that speaks to a different approach to containing yellowcake than one taken by the IAEA. You know, by actually getting it out of the region, rather than relying on “seals” and an inspection program that had been routinely frustrated.
The news here is that Iraq is now a different place. Keeping unnecessary stockpiles of yellowcake lying around with the hope that one day sanctions might be lifted is no longer an option.
It is what it is. You are, of course, free to try to diminish the importance of all this; but then, I’m free to wonder why you seem to see it as your duty to do so.
By the IAEA’s own guidelines that Mohammed guy wasn’t really supposed to have his term renewed but there he is. His own little fiefdom of fecklessness. I bet he drives a really nice car.
For real there’s only one thing that can shake Baradei’s grip on his sinecure.
Yup. He’s that dedicated to his cause.
So now we are clear.
It is living in the past when I mention it.
It is current when you mention it.
It is irrelevant that the Uranium was sitting in sealed monitored drums.
It was good that the facility was left in the capable hands of local villagers.
To notice just how badly the Iraq war was handled is synonymous with heaping praise on Saddam Hussein.
‘…drives a really nice car. …”
Meanwhile stabling two others in his garage at home.
The yellow cake was know to exist in the 1990s. In fact, it has been under international review for a long time. There has been nothing (I repeat nothing) to prevent the current administration from getting it out of the country for 5 years. If this had meant anything you might think that we would have heard FOX and the administration using proof that Saddam was building A-bombs in 2003. Guess what… they haven’t and this stuff is more of a danger to the local community than anyone or anything else. Nobody wanted it until now and I guess some deal was given. So to all the people who keep trying to find the “See I told you so…” moment.. it’s back to waiting and waiting. Denial sucks don’t it?
#104
I was referring to an US Army report a couple of years ago that made reference to finding the stuff in unmarked barrels in a warehouse nowhere near any previous sources. I’d like to be able to cite my source but can’t. I think I read it on either Powerline or Small Wars Journal.
You are absolutely convinced that the IAEA knew where all of the yellowcake saddam had was? Since they were kicked out before their job was finished I suspect they didn’t. Still. I glad I can give you some excuse for being smug.
OK muffler, but what was he going to with 550 metric TONS of the stuff? Had we not invaded, and given enough time and equipment what was the ultimate use for it?
Rusty,
There are a few reasons we believe that this was the Uranium the IAEA knew about.
First, although the IAEA was kicked out before their job was finished, they had conducted several inspections of that site in the months leading to the war (the last of which took place just one month before the invasion).
Second, as mentioned earlier the senior US official cited in the article said “There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991”.
Finally, the IAEA was allowed to visit the facility a few months after the war and matched the inventory there with what they had found shortly before the war in July. They found that many drums had been dumped out by looters, but the Uranium was still there (they verified the quantity), the looters had taken the drums to use for water storage.
If I may answer for muffler, the Uranium was bought at a time when he was in our (and the world’s) good graces. It was bought from European countries who were in negotiations for rebuilding Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Do I believe his intentions for that reactor were honorable?
Not by a long shot.
Did Iraq have a right under international law to have a reactor?
Absolutely.
Did he have the technology to use the yellowcake to build a nuclear weapon?
Not even close.
So he could have built his reactor under inspection, and if he kicked out inspectors again, his reactor could have been put out of commission AGAIN within seconds with no loss of life (except for maybe the night watchman).
Fuck you.
So ff11 thinks it’s a good plan to bomb possible weapons facilities reactors-look out, Iran!
A- It’s preferable to war.
B- Iran is not Iraq. First they are not guilty of invading their neighbors on a regular basis, and second, attacking them will have more dire repercussions, otherwise don’t kid yourself, we would have already done it.
But the point goofball is not hey let’s attack Iran but let’s not be a cowardly little Baracky and take military action off the table. It’s almost a moot point now anyway. Eight years of a Baracky tea party is plenty time for Iran to get their nuke on. The European stall tactics were incredibly effective I think. The important thing going forward is that Baracky’s Happy Socialist International Youth Service Brigade will be available to help clean up any fallout.
[…] Chimpy McHitlerburton’s Smirky Rodeo Ride Through History, 25: The Last Slice of Saddam Cake E… Protein Wisdom […]
[…] THE EVIL CHIMPY McHitlerburton’s smirky rodeo ride through history, 25: the last slice of Saddam cake eaten by […]