View Full Version : saddams 500 ton uranium stockpile



fromdust
12-18-2005, 07:45 PM
If the average American were aware of these undisputed facts, the debate over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would have been decided long ago - in President Bush's favor.

Why was Bush's uranium claim so important? Because if true, the mere attempt by the Iraqi dictator to acquire uranium would show that he had clear and incontrovertible plans to restart his nuclear program.

Maybe that's why the press seldom discusses the fact that Saddam already had a staggeringly large stockpile of uranium - 500 tons, to be exact.

And if his mere intention to acquire uranium was enough to justify fears of Saddam's nuclear ambition, what would the average person deduce from that fact that he'd already stockpiled a huge quantity of the bombmaking fuel?
In its May 22, 2004 edition, the New York Times confirmed a myriad of reports on Saddam's nuclear fuel stockpile - and revealed a chilling detail unknown to weapons inspectors before the war: that Saddam had begun to partially enrich his uranium stash.
The Times noted:

"The repository, at Tuwaitha, a centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, . . . . holds more than 500 tons of uranium . . . . Some 1.8 tons is classified as low-enriched uranium."

Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times that "the low-enriched version could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions."

"A country like Iran," Mr. Cochran said, "could convert that into weapons-grade material with a lot fewer centrifuges than would be required with natural uranium."

The paper conceded that while Saddam's nearly 2 tons of partially enriched uranium was "a more potent form" of the nuclear fuel, it was "still not sufficient for a weapon.
Consulted about the low-enriched uranium discovery, however, Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press that if it was of the 3 percent to 5 percent level of enrichment common in fuel for commercial power reactors, the 1.8 tons could be used to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb.

Luckily, Iraq didn't have even the small number of centrifuges necessary to get the job done.

Or did it?

The physicist tapped by Saddam to run his centrifuge program says that after the first Gulf War, the program was largely dismantled. But it wasn't destroyed.

In fact, according to what he wrote in his 2004 book, "The Bomb in My Garden," Dr. Mahdi Obeidi told U.S. interrogators: "Saddam kept funding the IAEC [Iraq Atomic Energy Commission] from 1991 ... until the war in 2003."

"I was developing the centrifuge for the weapons" right through 1997, he revealed.

And after that, Dr. Obeidi said, Saddam ordered him under penalty of death to keep the technology available to resume Iraq's nuke program at a moment's notice.

Dr. Obeidi said he buried "the full set of blueprints, designs - everything to restart the centrifuge program - along with some critical components of the centrifuge" under the garden of his Baghdad home.

"I had to maintain the program to the bitter end," he explained. All the while the Iraqi physicist was aware that he held the key to Saddam's continuing nuclear ambitions.

"The centrifuge is the single most dangerous piece of nuclear technology," Dr. Obeidi said in his book. "With advances in centrifuge technology, it is now possible to conceal a uranium enrichment program inside a single warehouse."

Consider: 500 tons of yellowcake stored at Saddam's old nuclear weapons plant, where he'd managed to partially enrich 1.8 tons. And the equipment and blueprints that could enrich enough uranium to make a bomb stored away for safekeeping. And all of it at the Iraqi dictator's disposal.

One more detail that Mr. Wilson and his media backers don't like to discuss: the reason Niger was such a likely candidate for Saddam's uranium shopping spree.

Responding to the firestorm that erupted after Wilson's July 2003 column, Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters:

"In case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger."

Midtowner
12-18-2005, 09:32 PM
Source?

And in other news, Margaret Thatcher revealed that for all this time, she's been a communist spie moonlighting for Al Quaeda since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Jack
12-19-2005, 12:14 AM
I'm sure if it were valid evidence, Fox News would've been all over it.

Jack
12-19-2005, 12:15 AM
Regardless of whether they had WMD's or not, Bush didn't allow time to let the UN Inspectors work. Saddam was complying and allowing them to search in the last days.

MadMonk
12-19-2005, 08:22 AM
Yeah, 12 years is just not enough time.

PUGalicious
12-19-2005, 08:55 AM
Of course, if there weren't any to be found, it would take a lot more than 12 years to find them, now wouldn't it?

MadMonk
12-19-2005, 09:51 AM
12 years to prove that he didn't have them is plenty of time. He couldn't even do that. And Jack, if you really believe that Hussein was going to finally comply in those "last days", then you are beyond help.

Bush: "Comply or be removed."
Hussein: "Okay, okay, I'm tired of fighting you guys, here's all the proof that I have destroyed everything. I was just kidding okay? Friends?"
:LolLolLol

PUGalicious
12-19-2005, 12:34 PM
1000 days in Iraq and we still haven't turned up anything. So, how was Saddam supposed to prove he didn't have something (because we didn't believe him when he said he didn't)? Allow weapons inspectors? He did. Did they find anything? No. Did we find anything? No.

So, how is he supposed to prove a negative?

MadMonk
12-19-2005, 01:08 PM
My mistake. I will clarify my meaning. He needed to prove that he destroyed what we know for a fact that he did have. We know because unfortunately we gave much of it to him.

So, if he was in compliance, why all the problems with the inspectors being kicked out for years and then playing cat-and-mouse games for the years he let them in? Those are not the actions of someone who is cooperating and working with everything above-board.

Midtowner
12-19-2005, 01:32 PM
It's hard to know whether there were WMD or not, it's not conclusive either way. The people who say there "were no WMD" are just as uninformed as their counterparts. Both sides just making up their facts as they go along makes for interesting (read: inane) debate!

What we can be sure of right now, is that for whatever reason, whether sure, optimistic, or unsure of the WMD status, the President ordered thousands of American troops (and Haliburton) into Iraq to effectively seize control of the country at great expense to American taxpayers and around 2000 or so families, not to mention the countless dead Iraqi citizens and soldiers.

When judging the President, you have to ask whether honestly, with the information that he had, did he do the right thing? I'll just say that I have no idea.. I think it's an academic question at best -- what the next President and the next congressional candidates have to say about the situation is of far more interest to me.

For example, do they plan to do anything about the rampant corruption and abuse by contractors like Haliburton? Would they support a reinstatement of a Truman Commission type body to expose and prosecute war profiteering? What are their expectations for the future of Iraq? Questions like that are of far more import and are far more relevant than finger pointing and blaming. The past is the past, we can either focus on what happened there, or we can focus on the future. Personally, I prefer the later.

PUGalicious
12-19-2005, 02:30 PM
I agree with you for the most part, Midtowner, but I think that what happened in the past is important. If we don't figure out what went wrong, then how can we ever learn from our mistakes? If we don't ask the tough questions about how decisions were made and why, how can we try to put in additional safeguards to prevent such costly mistakes in the future?

If we've learned anything is that we can't take the president at his word. More questions need to be asked and answered before committing our country to something so significant.

Midtowner
12-19-2005, 02:52 PM
I concur as to considering the past in context of its direct application to the present, but I would stop there as it's not something that is worth dwelling on. There are only certain issues which are applicable today -- is the President criminally liable for any of his transgressions (executive privilege and public policy would tend to say no), and if not, can we hold people who gave him bad advice and/or profited from it accountable? Perhaps yes.

-- that's why I'd really love to see the Truman Commission reinstated.

Patrick
12-19-2005, 03:12 PM
My mistake. I will clarify my meaning. He needed to prove that he destroyed what we know for a fact that he did have. We know because unfortunately we gave much of it to him.

How are you going to prove you destroyed something, when the evidence has been destroyed?

MadMonk
12-19-2005, 03:39 PM
While I'm not knowledgable enough to answer specifically how you demonstrate WMD destruction, I would think that there would be methods such as parts made permanently non-functional, empty containers crushed, etc. I'm sure there are other ways.

Jack
12-19-2005, 03:52 PM
Still doesn't answer where the WMD's are.

MadMonk
12-19-2005, 04:11 PM
Nope, I never said I could. Are you certain that they aren't in Syria or even Iran?

PUGalicious
12-19-2005, 04:35 PM
I guess we call all be as certain as we were on Iraq with that "slam dunk" evidence.

Midtowner
12-19-2005, 04:45 PM
Jack -- to fixate so much on the WMD question is to sacrifice the current reality for the past one. It's may be true that Bush willfully misled the American people, and if that's true, he should face consequences along with whoever was complacent in the conspiracy. Of course, whether or not there was some sort of conspiracy remains to be seen.

Again -- to fixate on that is to obsess about the past.

In the present, we're still concerned with locating the WMD's, but that's more of a peripheral issue. The current issue is to try to exit the situation and leave at least a somewhat stable and democratic Iraq which will be key in our future mideast relations.

MadMonk
12-19-2005, 05:28 PM
I guess we call all be as certain as we were on Iraq with that "slam dunk" evidence.
But, I'm not saying we should go into Syria or Iran am I? Come on Scribe, do you really believe Hussein destroyed everything? We all know how you feel about Bush, but would you trust Hussein at his word?

PUGalicious
12-19-2005, 05:45 PM
No, I wouldn't trust Saddam at his word. But, as imperfect as it was, we had Saddam contained. The weapons inspectors didn't find anything up to the point Bush kicked them out to invade the country. Bush's own weapons inspector (http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/25/sprj.nirq.kay/) said "that his group found no evidence Iraq had stockpiled unconventional weapons before the U.S.-led invasion in March."

I can understand why Midtowner prefers not to focus on the past, but deal with the present and future. However, I believe that until we understand the process that led us to where we are, we can't safeguard our country from leaders acting rashly, unwisely or not in the best interests of the country. I know many on here won't believe me when I say this, but for me, this is not a partisan issue. I would feel just as passionate if another party was in office. There is a fundamental lack of integrity and trustworthiness in our political eadership, both in the White House and in Congress, and it's dangerous to our country's future. It's not just foreign relations either. We have a crushing debt that neither party has real answers or solutions for. We're putting our nation's future each day we add millions and billions to the national debt. (But that's a topic for another thread.)

BTW, how do I feel about Bush?

MadMonk
12-19-2005, 09:11 PM
BTW, how do I feel about Bush?

Well, I think this sums it up pretty well: :wink:

Another term??? Oh, please God, no.http://www.okctalk.com/images/Smailies%2001-28-08/stars.gif

Midtowner
12-19-2005, 11:02 PM
Jack -- please tell us why "where the WMD's are" relates to the situation right now?

Jack
12-19-2005, 11:31 PM
Jack -- please tell us why "where the WMD's are" relates to the situation right now?

Oh, it just confirms that Bush lied to the American public.

The president needs to pay the consequences for his actions. Doesn't seem like anyone in our government is rying to do anything to punish the president.

PUGalicious
12-20-2005, 04:43 AM
Well, I think this sums it up pretty well: :wink:
You're right. It does pretty much sum it up.

Midtowner
12-20-2005, 08:15 AM
Oh, it just confirms that Bush lied to the American public.

The president needs to pay the consequences for his actions. Doesn't seem like anyone in our government is rying to do anything to punish the president.


Jack, there's this thing called executive privilege. It essentially would keep anyone from having a criminal or civil course of action against the President of the United States. He's free to lie and to mislead. The representatives of the people, if they find a good course of action are free to impeach and remove him from office.

There are two reasons that nothing has been done to him and very likely, nothing will be done to him:

1) There's a difference between lieing, misleading, and making a bad decision based on poor information -- it is not conclusive as of yet (and probably won't be for some time) which one of those things he did.

2) The Republicans have the majority and they aren't suicidal. To start an impeachment trial the year before house and senate elections would equate to the largest landslide ever for the minority party (which is still a very distinct possibility, but it's hard to tell at this stage in the game).

So if you're wondering, that's why it's absolutely pointless to dwell on "what will be done to the President" for the evils he has committed. It's questionable as to whether he committed evils, and there's no one in a position that could effect him that would actually go through with anything.

I agree with Scribe that it is important to know about the past in order to avoid future mistakes, but as far as anything else, from where I'm sitting, anything else is just wasting our time.