550 Metric Tons of Uranium Removed From Iraq 647
Orion Blastar tips us to an AP report that 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" uranium has successfully been removed from Iraq. The operation lasted three months, and it required 37 separate flights and an 8,500-mile trip by boat to reach a port in Montreal. Quoting:
"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. The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth 'tens of millions of dollars.' A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors."
Thanks, media, (Score:5, Insightful)
Under wraps? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's hardly news. In fact, one of the reasons the CIA was skeptical about the claim (which Joe Wilson found to be false) that Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger was that Iraq was known to already have substantial stocks of yellowcake--just no way to process it, so there was no reason for them to be trying to buy more. This was just one of the pieces of information that was ignored by the media because it didn't fit with the "Iraq is actively seeking nuclear weapons" narrative that the Bush admin
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the yellowcake we knew they had since the UN inspectors bagged and tagged it a decade and half or so ago.
That's what Bush meant by WMDs...
Why he didn't just say "the WMDs we left there last time" I'll never know.
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Informative)
And yet... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah...
It's not so much 'pull out in 16 months', it's 'pull out gradually, finishing in 16 months'.
What happens if Iraq goes to heck in the process? Is he willing to adjust?
Right now the Iraqi security forces to have taken over responsibility over much of Iraq, and violence is dropping. Well, to the point that we're looking at having to concentrate on Afghanistan again.
Other than that, more diplomacy and aid. While I don't disagree with the aid(believing that people with jobs tend to stay out of trouble),
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is what made the story so ridiculous. Iraq already *had* large amounts of yellowcake. It was produced as a byproduct of phosphate mining back in the 70s and 80s, back when they actually had a nuclear program. The concept that they were going to buy more was transparently idiotic to anyone who had actually studied the Iraqi nuclear program. Which is why there was such an international uproar: because a lot of people actually *had* studied the Iraqi nuclear program.
The same thing with the aluminum tubes. Iraq's centrifuges called for flow-formed maraging steel rotors. Unless they had *entirely scrapped all of their previous progress that they spent ages developing*, an aluminum that's ill-suited for welding and would easily have snapped under the centripetal force wouldn't have done a darned thing for them. On the other hand, it was the exact same type of tubing known to be used for small Iraqi military rockets. The concept was widely mocked by the international community and the international press. In the US, not so much. In fact, they mocked the concept that it would be used for Iraqi rockets (despite us knowing about said rockets), talking about how even we use poorer alloys than that for our rockets, and completely ignoring the fact that the Iraqis used a higher quality aluminum to compensate for lower manufacturing quality.
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I don't recall Blix saying that - it doesn't sound like him. Usually he went out of his way to claim that everything was lollipops in Iraq - something I still don't really understand.
The thing I don't get is why, given Saddam's previous behavior, everyone seemed willing to give Iraq a pass. The international community has no mechanism with which to deal with people like him. Does anyone really think they would not have tried to make a bomb as soon as he could? Even if they couldn't achieve fission, they
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit, Bullshit and Bullshit. Blix did say that the Iraqis didn't have a working nuclear program, but that they would start up again if inspections ceased. Yellow cake on scuds would do fuck all, probably a short term increase in repository problems in people who inhaled the dust and some very, very mild heavy metal poisoning. Bush invaded because of Iraqi oil and the behaviour of the US under Bush has done more harm to international peace than Saddam could ever have hoped for in his wildest dreams. Yep, we need a mechanism to deal with people like Saddam, but more importantly, we need a mechanism to deal with people like Bush.
Sure, he came up with an excuse and a lot of people bought it, but it's pretty clear that the whole invasion was armed robbery. The previous Australian defence minister, now leader of the opposition, even said so publicly before he was gagged by one of Bush's partners in crime, then Prime Minister Howard.
So many people all around the world knew at the time what it was about and yet people still maintain this line that he did it for the reasons that he stated publicly. He is responsible for the deaths of many thousands of civilians, women and children, all to supply oil for American SUVs and profits for companies he and his friends own stakes in. He is a common criminal in an uncommon position. What would a Texan get in Texas for shooting one child in an armed robbery?
On a related note, why is it okay for a country to have nuclear weapons, pursue new nuclear weapons and resist international calls for disarmament when that country is the only one in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons aggressively and has a commander in chief with no regard for international law, let alone the constitutional law of his own country? Why is that okay, but Iraq or now Iran wanting nukes is not?
Yeah, I know the knee jerk emotive response that these countries are "evil", but any honest assessment of international affairs for the last 100 years will show that there is one country that consistently invades other countries or topples governments when they don't tow the line. There is one country that consistently points the finger at anyone else for criminal or terrorist activity when it is funding or committing terrorist acts itself. I am not at all surprised that Iran wants nukes given the threats it faces from Isreal and the US.
The thing that concerns me about this nuclear fuel is that now it has moved to Canada, it could find it's way into a new generation of US weapons and now that GWB looks like getting off without being gassed, electrocuted or otherwise put down, a precedent has been set making the White House even more attractive to psychopathic criminals. I kind of wish the yellow cake had been left in Iraq.
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, if you're speaking of the genocide against the Kurds, there was international outrage, it made the front page of every major European newspapers, and UN sanctions were going to be imposed against Iraq. It's just that the US vetoed those sanctions and shortly after -- the US gave Iraq one billion dollars in loans (that never got paid back by the way).
Like I said, it did have a mechanism, but the US vetoed it. At the time of the genocide, the US government supported Saddam, and more importantly -- it supported Saddam when there was an international backlash against him for that specific War Crime. So, you've got it completely backwards.
Him and countless others. It's not as if North Korea was a big surprise for instance.
Him and countless others. By the way, are you even aware that we're contaminating our very own soldiers (in addition to the locals) by using depleted uranium as heavy ammo? This is 'Agent Orange' all over again. Make the soldiers handle something toxic (and by the way, I am not a tree-hugger -- I am aware that not all radiation is toxic, but in this case depleted uranium and even pulvarized depleted uranium is tremendously toxic). Tell your own soldiers that it's perfectly safe. Deny everything for as long as possible. Label all the critics conspiracy theorists (not that this label is not sometimes correctly warranted). And watch your former soldiers drop like flies ten to thirty years from now.
Do you know a little bit about dog training? Forgive the analogy, but dogs are pack animals just like we are, and when I use that term -- I mean no disrespect by it. But when a country does something wrong, you must come down on it immediately -- not ten or twenty years later -- otherwise your intervention will seem self-serving (or at the very least completely disconnected from the original event). And when one of your friends (or one of your family members) does something horribly wrong, let's say that a family member of yours commits a genocide -- well you stop him -- or at the very least you stop supporting him -- and you do that immediately. This ethics of "You're either for us, or you're against us" is the most retarded tribal thinking there ever was. This kind of tribal thinking is something I would expect from Iraqi or Iranian people, not from the President of the United States. When someone does something wrong, whether they're with us or against us, you come down hard on them. Same thing if our very own people have done those horrible things, we take care and punish of our own people for Crimes of War as swiftly, as transparently, and as fairly as we do it for others. That's the only way we can stop this kind of tribal feuding in the long-run.
How bad? But the neo-cons wanted to invade Iraq a long time ago, and for reasons of strategic hegemony -- not supposedly because things were "bad" in Iraq. This is documented, from their very own mouths. Asking this question implies that you do not seem to know this.
So now, let me ask you. When we know that our own government is making bad decisions, and when we know that our own government is clearly contradicting the constitution (for instance, the Constitution makes t
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Insightful)
Try reading the article. I know it's a lot of words and all that, but persevere till the bitter middle and you will find:
"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."
In case your memory needs refreshing, the first US vs Iraq war was in 1991 and there was great worldwide support for it. The next US vs Iraq war was in 2003 and there was not much support for it worldwide (I'm sure you still wonder why).
I bet the most US people seeing the headlines will think a similar way - "Hey Bush was right".
So it's going to be yet another wonderful "mission accomplished" by the "news people". Like shooting fish in the barrel.
Thanks media alright.
Re: (Score:2)
The media is actually reporting things right this time. It's just that people infer what they want to believe.
The biggest obstable to an informed population is the population itself. The media, however nebulous of a concept that is anyway, ranks pretty low on that totem pole.
Sadly, most people are far too willing to blame their ignorance on someone else.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The media is actually reporting things right this time. It's just that people infer what they want to believe.
If they were reporting things right, they would address the inference and refute it.
But that's just me, I have high standards.
At least there was some coverage [nytimes.com] of last month's final report on the exaggerations and lies leading up to the invasion of Iraq. But NBC, ABC, and CBS actually ignored it, while MSNBC dedicated only 90 seconds to the story.
You'd think this would be big news.
But then, only a tiny handful of US news outlets reported on Colin Powell's use of a plagiarized and largely outdated 10-year-old
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Well it is enough to create "reasonable doubt" in any impeachment trial. I think I said that before on Slashdot when many claimed Saddam didn't even have yellow cake uranium, but in the end the truth comes out.
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Informative)
As has been said repeatedly before, having a stockpile of unused 27-year-old yellowcake != trying to buy more from Niger. The former was never contested, as everyone knew he had yellowcake stockpiles. The latter turned out to be a pile of crap.
550 tons of material sitting unused for 2+ decades doesn't lend much credence to the idea that he was pursuing nuclear weapons. Much to the contrary, it's a good clue that he wasn't. It would be as likely that Iraq was stockpiling silicon for use in microprocessor construction absent anything resembling a facility that could create the intermediate compononents necessary for the final product, let alone the final product itself.
This is not something that can be used in Bush's defense, unless one lacks the most basic reasoning skills. Then again, that seems to be a common trait amongst those who attempt to defend Bush...
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Funny, though, when it's about depleted Uranium everybody gets paranoid, even if depleted uranium is obtained when the radioactive uranium is taken out of "the yellow cake". When it's yellow cake only, it's nothing ...
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Informative)
No, this is the 'smoking gun' that only confirms Wilson was telling the truth. Wilson was already saying that the new purchase of Yellow-cake from Niger made absolutely no sense because Iraq had plenty of it already.
I couldn't find the direct quote from Joe Wilson, but if anyone is willing to do a search through youtube/NPR -- I remember Wilson also repeating this fact several times during his NPR interviews.
OMG, they buying yellowcake! Quick! Invade Canada! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of the sketch on Bremner, Bird and Fortune (British satirical show) where the Defence Minister was being interviewed.
Interviewer: How did you know that Saddam had these weapons? Minister: Well, ah... receipts, mostly.
Yes indeed. The UK sold both chemical weapons and obvious CWpn precursors to Iraq.
But before that's used as support for Iraq having WMD (as the USA and UK of course both do), experts agreed that such weapons were volatile and would long since have expired at the time of the invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition in March 2003. Had concern about WMD been the real motivation, then Hans Blix of the UN would have been allowed to finish his inspection. The Iraqis were co-operating after all. However, this couldn't be allowed as he would have returned a verdict of "no WMD" and the US and UK's pitiful excuse would have exploded completely.
The question of why the US has the right to possess the world's largest arsenal yet tell other people they must remain unarmed, is a separate issue, of course. But as there were no WMD (stupid term), it doesn't arise except as a means of highlighting hypocracy.
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:4, Insightful)
Had concern about WMD been the real motivation, then Hans Blix of the UN would have been allowed to finish his inspection. The Iraqis were co-operating after all. The question of why the US has the right to possess the world's largest arsenal yet tell other people they must remain unarmed, is a separate issue, of course. But as there were no WMD (stupid term), it doesn't arise except as a means of highlighting hypocracy.
mmmmmm....I am an opinionated redneck from Italy, so everyone should take my words with a pinch of salt, but I remember Saddam cooperating little, or not at all; to quote Blix himself, [un.org] "Resolution 687 (1991), like the subsequent resolutions I shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq but such was often withheld or given grudgingly."
P.S.: as to the "separate issue", the US has been the ONLY nuclear power for about four years, [wikipedia.org], but as far as I recall no US president talked liberally about "pushing an entire population into the sea", as many arab leaders have done, and Saddam in particular. I do have to remind you that you sleep at night in a house without a moat because the policemen in your country carry submachine guns. do they scare you? are you clamoring against their insistence to control the amount and type of similar weapons on sale? If so, My apologies.
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, by "US" you mean "Russia", to which the US gives several billion dollars a year to dispose of their stockpile which is far larger. The US nuclear weapon inventory is a lot smaller than it used to be, and most of what is categorized as a nuke is actually a disassembled trigger rather than a warhead, and the US will have finished disposal of its chemical weapons in the next few years (not so for several other countries). The nukes (both US and the fissile material the US buys from Russia) are turned into reactor fuel.
You might want to double check your assertions about US weapons of mass destruction. The Cold War was a long time ago.
The US is DESTROYIING its stockpiles (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The US is DESTROYIING its stockpiles (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah that's right, the sanctions that where working and containing Saddam.
You're also right that the US did n't invade Kuwait, it invaded Iraq after buts thats okay because Iraq invaded first, but granted the US did n't gas Kurds.
The UK also got to invade Iraq twice (before it was Iraq) and had already bombed Kurds the first tie. Winston Churchill at the time (1920) infact also wanted to gas the Kurds. A chilling quote: "I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes".
Anyway like you say apples and oranges, but at the end of the day its all fruit when it comes to causing suffering.
Re:The US is DESTROYIING its stockpiles (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah that's right, the sanctions that where working and containing Saddam.
With all due respect, what planet are you on? Gore Vidalpia?
The sanctions were definitely *not* working, in that most of the Oil-for-Food funds were being siphoned off for Saddam's personal use while his people starved. Containing? If you mean, "wasn't invading any other countries", perhaps.... but he was about as contained as a mob boss in a medium security jail cell, already directing and planning his activities/revenge by phone for when he gets out.
The evidence for this was apparent, but became even more convincing once the invasion had occurred and we saw how much corruption there actually was in the Oil-for-Food program. Thanks France.
In addition, the "containment" was being performed at the hest of the US Military, who'd every so often have to blow up an Anti-aircraft gun that locked onto them in the No-Fly zones (where Saddam was "contained" from gassing his domestic enemies). Each and every one of those incidents was adequate reason to throw out the armistice and resume hostilities against Iraq, since they were all violations of the negotiated agreements.
The WMD program was a red herring. Despite the pre-existing resolutions that allowed the use of force against Saddam, the US (or UK) felt the need to get political cover for finding a reason to go after Saddam *now*, since the general public and random kleptocracies out there didn't understand that our defensive posture had changed after 9/11. They bet that Iraq had WMD, and so used that as the focal point. Bad call... but if they'd used the war crimes against the Kurds, no-fly incidents, or Oil-for-Food corruption as the focal points instead no one would be complaining today (for that).
...its all fruit when it comes to causing suffering.
If you're a bona-fide pacifist, fine. Otherwise, there's a moral difference between good and evil in human actions, and if you can't tell the difference then I pity you. And your students.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And you must be from planet Chenselvania.
Sanctions were meant to keep the military threat of Iraq at bay. Your argument has been proven over and over again to be wrong. Although it had natural resources that could have purchased any weapon system the military industrial complex was able to create, Iraq's military had antiquated equipment and was unabl
Re:The US is DESTROYIING its stockpiles (Score:5, Insightful)
None of which added up to a need to invade in 2003. (As you may recall, the US invaded over the objections of the inspectors.) Nope, we needed to gin up a bunch of lies about WMD and make up all sorts of BS to pretend that containment wasn't working.
Disengenuous? That's you. Your decision to ignore the actual facts doesn't change them. And to the extent that you spin your disregard for those facts as part of your absurd call for "war crimes" trials just shows you as the politically motivated liar that you are.
Back atcha, chief. Colin Powell did not present facts to the UN General Assembly. The US did not rely on facts to justify the war. In addition to pursuing the Iraq war with criminal incompentence at best, the US has most definitely and determinedly committed war crimes at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. And your ex post facto attempt to spin the causus belli into something legitimate, as with all the others since then, just shows you to be the politically motivated liar that you are.
Re:Thanks, media, (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, neither the chemical weapons (which everyone except the US government had acknowledged for years) or possession of materials that showed that he wanted nukes (which, again, was never disputed) shows that he was anywhere near having weapons which posed an imminent threat - let alone had the intent of threatening the US or its allies (which would have been suicidal).
The invasion was illegal under international law in any case.
Finally, this stuff was found at the time of the invasions, and no-one thought it proved anything then: why does it prove something now, just because it has been sold?
Time to bomb Quebec (Score:4, Funny)
We can't let those French Canadians have nuclear weapons!
Re:Time to bomb Quebec (Score:4, Funny)
"We can't let those French Canadians have nuclear weapons!"
Don't worry. Intel says they've hired Newfies to weaponize it and yellowcake cannon balls aren't much threat...
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Re:Time to bomb Quebec (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you dare compare us to France, it's insulting
Yeah it's insulting to be compared to a country with a lasting cultural influence and relevance who doesn't have to spell stop 'ARRET' rather than 'STOP' (as in France) on stop signs to ensure the survival of its dialect among its very population. Half of your cultural impact on the rest of the world was in the movie Titanic's title song.
Tabarnac, you just got pwné!
(Retroactive disclaimer : I'm French, could you tell?)
Re: (Score:2)
Quebec is way cooler than France
Oh, well, I'm not sure that qualifies as an achievement ;-). Disclaimer : this is coming from someone who fled France as soon as possible for Ireland, without any prior knowledge of the country or any job there. That's how cool France is.
Re:Time to bomb Quebec (Score:5, Funny)
It might have something to do with the latitude and the gulf stream...
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It might have something to do with the latitude and the gulf stream...
lol.. that too
This is sarcasm right? (Score:5, Informative)
"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."
Troll prophylactic... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Troll prophylactic... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is your point?
Bush did not make an argument about Yellowcake that Saddam had. He said he was buying more... which ... was...a... LIE.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Or possibly a mistake.
Re:Troll prophylactic... (Score:4, Informative)
No. It was willful negligence more than anything else. Read "State Of War." The reports of Iraqi attempts to buy yellowcake uranium were based on a forged document. Moreover, the President relied on a source known as "Curveball" to make assertions regarding Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program in the State of the Union Address even though the German intelligence organization (and the US State Department) said Curveball was unreliable. Turns out that Curveball was an alcoholic Iraqi ex-pat living in Germany working at a McDonald's, and the guy had delusions of grandeur. Oops.
Joe Wilson is the one who lied (Score:4, Informative)
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So...the 9/11 BIPARTISAN commission were just 'Republican Water Carriers'?
How predictable. If they agree with you, they're "speaking truth to power" but if they don't, they're sellouts.
I'll freely say that the intel on Iraq's WMD programs was sketchy, inconsistent, and largely inaccurate due to excessive dependence on defectors who had their own agendas (Who EVER takes defector information without considering their context? What a rookie mistake....).
But this doesn't mean that Richard Wilson isn't just a
Canada.... (Score:5, Funny)
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with all that oil you have up there......
It's not Oil [wikipedia.org] that Canada has that makes us so interested. It is in fact Oil Shale [wikipedia.org]. Which requires one to pay a tremendous cost (water, environment, energy) to develop the Kerogen [wikipedia.org] into usable liquid hydrocarbons.
It's not worth the energy and materials needed IMHO.
Homer (Score:4, Funny)
Mmmmmmmmm, Yellowcake.
Can we build more nuclear reactors now? (Score:2, Interesting)
According to Xemplar Energy [xemplar.ca], the energy in one pound of yellowcake is equivalent to the energy in 31 barrels of fuel oil. So that 550 metric tons could keep 30 nuclear reactors going for a year.
Since there is so much yellow cake in the world that they're literally tripping over it in a country everyone knew had none--the stuff must have been naturally occurring and just sitting around in "bunkers" eroded from underground water formations, since we all know Iraq wasn't importing the stuff or planning to use
Re:Can we build more nuclear reactors now? (Score:5, Informative)
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As much as I *hate* to stick up for Bush, the truth of the matter is that Saddam bluffed and we called him on it. He did everything he could to make everyone believe he had WMDs.
That still doesn't justify the invasion, and it doesn't justify the continuing occupation.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed, and it's amazing how the AC and others who still support Bush try to distribute and redirect the responsibility away from the White House: "But, but, but, THEY said the same thing too!"
Yes, and they didn't go and invade Iraq, instead preferring to use diplomacy and trade tactics to try to convince Saddam to give up the WMDs, and the UN sent inspectors to make damn sure that he wasn't building WMDs. None of them falsified or glorified intelligence reports, nor did they link Iraq to 9/11 like the Bush
Re:Itching for war (Score:4, Informative)
Saddam wanted Iran to think he still had WMDs for his own security. No credible person disputes that. No matter how many times you retards repeat it,
So, Saddam was able to simply lie about WMDs and cause the US to waste hundreds of billions of dollars as a result?
He may have lost the battle, but damn! did he win that war.
George W. Bush never blamed 9/11 on Iraq.
O'really? Perhaps you are right. He never outright blamed 9/11 on Iraq, but he sure as shit intimated it on a frequent basis, making at least 28 false statements about Iraq's links to al qaeda. [publicintegrity.org] But at least he has plausible deniability - it wasn't his fault the public heard "al qaeda" and thought "9/11" no, no, no, no!
The risk of Iraq engaging in a terrorist attack was very real and the scale could have been huge with state sponsorship.
Eh? Just where the hell did you get that from? Because it sure as shit don't follow from anything else ya said.
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Re:Can we build more nuclear reactors now? (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? He said he didn't have any, and (after dicking around a bit) he let in UN weapons inspectors, and they said he didn't have any [wikipedia.org]. The the US ignored this info, fabricated their own with faulty intelligence, and invaded.
I don't like Saddam at all, but I knew, as did a large portion of Americans who were listening to more than just the US administration, that Iraq did not have WMDs and that an invasion was a bad idea. I had arguments to this effect with many people at the time, but about 2/3 of the nation was in a rabid war frenzy. I'd say about 1/2 still are.
Our nation fucked up -- please stop trying to rewrite history.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't like Saddam at all, but I knew, as did a large portion of Americans who were listening to more than just the US administration, that Iraq did not have WMDs and that an invasion was a bad idea.
That's bullshit. Virtually all the US media (even places like the NY Times) was reporting that Saddam likely had WMD. The vast majority of Americans believed he had it. What sources are you referring to when you say: "a large portion of Americans who were listening to more than just the US administration", since virtually all the media was highly uncritical and passed on reports from the administration?
Not contradictory at all. (Score:4, Informative)
What sources are you referring to when you say: "a large portion of Americans who were listening to more than just the US administration", since virtually all the media was highly uncritical and passed on reports from the administration?
Foreign media. Most people who were cynical about the administration's motives long ago realized that the US media wasn't to be trusted to seriously contradict the President.
That's how I heard a lot about how the aluminum tubes that the administration was saying were for uranium centrifuges absolutely could not have been used for the purpose (instead before for rocket tubes). Foreign sources were also the biggest sources publishing Ambassador Wilson's logic for why Iraq wasn't getting yellowcake from Niger and were the ones who brought my attention to the fact that the "roving chemical weapons trailers" were actually for making hydrogen balloons to get artillery with. (The latter bit only came out after the war, though.)
The mainstream US media lost all credibility with me very early in the Bush administration when when went from hounding Clinton's every step to kissing Bush's ring pretty much within the span of a single year. I'm not the only person who feels that way by a long shot, and those of us who read the BBC and other foreign news were the ones who caught on pretty quickly that the causus belli was being manufactured.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
how about this: How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq [spiegel.de], though the article reads more like "How German intelligence sent the US intelligence on a wild goose chase". More here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542708,00.html [spiegel.de] , http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,542888,00.html [spiegel.de] , http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,558224,00.html [spiegel.de] .
I find it interesting that ever since WWII ended, some European country fails at diplomacy and US has to clean it up an
Everybody panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
So the primary hazard is mass panic.. exactly the same as a (uranium based) radiological dispersion device (dirty bomb) then. Also not too dissimilar to what the US have been doing for the last 5 years - shooting uranium all over the place.
Re: (Score:2)
I dont buy this idea that yellowcake uranium would not pose human health risks. Its a heavy metal, and there are reports of damage to internal organs and harm from it. Breathing this stuff would also be bad. The DU you mention has been used extensively in iraq since 1991 and there has been a drastic increase in cancer and birth defects in iraq since. The DU produces levels of radioactivity far higher than safe limits. The use of DU is truly a crime against humanity, it is the same as litering the country w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the primary hazard is mass panic disproportionate to the
Quick question (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there any radioactive material that is potent enough for a dirty bomb? Wouldn't blowing the material up just spread it out so that it's doesn't emit enough rem to do damage?
Even if you could find a material potent enough how would you store it? How would you move the bomb into a strategic position without killing yourself from radiation poisoning?
I think a dirty bomb is about the dumbest idea I've ever heard.
Re:Quick question (Score:5, Insightful)
You choose a material that is biologically available. Then that brings strong alpha emitters up close to cells in the body. For example you might want something that could replace small amounts of calcium in people's bones and teeth with a radioactive isotope. Or something that would replace carbon in the fat in internal organ, skin and brain. That way when you spread the radioactive material far it can quickly be concentrated into human beings doint maximum damage. It also can decimate the environment due to bio-accumulation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
there is at least one radioactive element dirty enough.
do you remember the UK person who was 'poisoned' on an airplane with a microscopic dose of a radioactive element and then died 2 weeks later, as well as the person who targeted him? (apparently the assassin got enough contact with the stuff to die himself!) very nasty, the main problem being, how do you refine enough of that highly toxic stuff, since only machines can safely handle the stuff,
oh yeah, i think it's also very rare, and perhaps a byproduct
Re: (Score:2)
> Is there any radioactive material that is potent enough for a dirty bomb? Wouldn't blowing the material up just spread it out so that it's doesn't emit enough rem to do damage?
Plutonium would do quite nicely, even if it wasn't radioactive, its toxicity would be enough.
Re:Quick question (Score:4, Informative)
Yes and no. For this purpose, the fact that uranium is radioactive is mostly incidental. Purified uranium is (approximately) .7% Uranium-235 (radioactive) and 99.3% Uranium-238 (stable) -- but this is also irrelevant. Uranium, radioactive or otherwise, is poisonous, and breathing uranium dust is one of the more hazardous methods of ingestion. Most of the other commonly known radioactive materials (e.g. plutonium) are poisonous as well. This is the principle behind a dirty bomb -- to use the material as a poison, with its radioactivity mostly incidental.
That said, the real danger from a dirty bomb using yellowcake appears to be fairly minimal. First of all, yellowcake isn't really pure uranium. Rather, it's compounds relatively high in uranium, such as uranyl hydroxide hydrate, uranyl sulfate hydrate, sodium para-uranate, and uranyl peroxide hydrate. To produce anything very poisonous, you'd have to purify the uranium.
Then you're left with a few more problems, such as the fact that purified uranium is a soft, dense metal so that:
There's also the fact that while uranium is poisonous:
All in all, the real threat from uranium in a "dirty bomb" is pretty minimal. For this purpose, lead would be about as effective, and a whole lot cheaper and easier to get.
The cake wasn't a lie? (Score:3, Funny)
Like comparing rust to steel (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do people always feel the need to stress that yellowcake could be made into weapons, no matter how far from being a weapon it presently is? It's like saying:
...though making a high quality steel tool from rust is significantly easier than making a weapon from yellowcake. The ubiquitous anti-nuke meme (it's radioactive, be afraid!)? Or just boilerplate like measuring energy use in average households equivalents or heavy things in adult male elephants?
-- MarkusQ
Re: (Score:2)
Not trying to be a smart-ass here, but can you name another reason for a country to actively obtain and store uranium ( in any form ) other then to use it for either power generation or weapons?
Its not like it was just laying around, like the rusty lawn ornament example you give in comparison. ( nor is anyone collecting the rust...)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Uranium, due to it's huge number of electronic states, actually makes a pretty good radiation shield. It also makes decent fishing weights, armor plates.. a number of uses of uranium are listed here [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying that the yellowcake is a lie?
Nuts (Score:5, Informative)
Nuts. Unless you've got some super secret enrichment technique that you haven't shared with the rest of us, you are quite simply dead wrong. Yellowcake is just a mix of uranium salts, and making it is no more complicated than any typical mining operation; drill some holes, crush some rock, and leach the minerals out with a suitable leaching agent. Dry the result and repeat. You don't need specialized equipment, or even a great deal of skill. It is a low tech, low precision step.
Enrichment, on the other hand, is a bear, requiring precision engineering, lots of finiky equipment, and a great deal of skill.
--MarkusQ
Fixed that for you (Score:3, Interesting)
The yellowcake in question has been sitting there for close to twenty years, maybe longer. Sadam might have had dreams of making a weapon with it back in the 1980's, when he had (or thought he had) support from the US, but the program was shut down dead by the early nineties and never got going again. Nor would it have even without the US le
It's about time... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is gratifying to hear we've disassembled the last remnants of Iraq's non-existent WMD program.
Re:It's about time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its easier to make WMD out of oil (napalm) than it is to make them out of yellowcake.
This stuff was most certainly never going to be used in any kinds of weapons program. Iraw never had the facilities to process this stuff at the levels required, and even if they did it would probably be cheaper and easier to just buy black market soviet stuff en masse.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Its easier to make WMD out of oil (napalm) than it is to make them out of yellowcake.
You get a lot more bang for your buck with nuclear weapons than you do with napalm. And I'm puzzled why you made the comparison. It's like saying breathing is a cheaper and easier than selling cars. So no way would someone be sell cars - even if they had this well-lit lot with a couple hundred cars on it - and a history of attempting to sell cars.
This stuff was most certainly never going to be used in any kinds of weapons program. Iraw never had the facilities to process this stuff at the levels required, and even if they did it would probably be cheaper and easier to just buy black market soviet stuff en masse.
I hate statements like this. First, this stuff was used in a weapons program. Iraq has a long history of attempting to make nuclear weapons dating back to the 70's
Canadian menace? (Score:2)
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp.
OMGWTFBBQ! Canada has bought iraqi Yellowcake??
I guess we can't blame them anymore... [youtube.com]
WMD argument ender (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if this yellowcake was a WMD, it wouldn't be harmful on its own. The only WMD we ever had to worry about is the "Death to America" attitude. All the physical WMD's in the world won't kill many people if they're not wielded with the motive to kill.
What the FUCK! (Score:5, Funny)
so now we're led to believe that CANADA is pursuing nuclear weapons?
They just purchased 550 Metric tonnes of yellowcake uranium from a supposed Terrorist state and we're just letting them do it?
Canada is a ticking bomb here people!
We need to attack Ontario now!
Why isn't bush willing to protect us from these terrorists?
Re: (Score:2)
Why isn't bush willing to protect us from these terrorists?
The Democratic congress. They are not letting him declare war on Canada. Darn those Democrats.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You give your beer too much credit.
Wouldn't be surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to keep up appearances, the American government will be forced to give Iraqis some sort of democracy, and they (as a Shia majority) will absolutely elect someone friendly to their neighbor Iran. This was probably pre-emptive move to get the uranium out the grip of Tehran.
As we all know, countries cannot be left to conduct business on their own terms, because it could possibly be harmful to the only interests that matter: ours.
The Rev. Moon to the rescue (Score:2)
AP is owned by The Washington Times, which, in turn is owned by the Unification Church - headed by Rev. Moon.
Murdoch-Moon / same coin different sides.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Myung_Moon [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
You're thinking of UPI.--United Press International.
The Associated Press, or AP is a cooperative owned by the media organizations that contribute to it.
This Depot Was Already Known (Score:4, Informative)
Sadam had declared this depot of uranium during the last Gulf War. It was put under U.N. jurisdiction and monitored for years.
Sadam had lots of weapons and stockpiles that were put under U.N. seals, and monitored by personnel and remote cameras. These depots were located all over Iraq and most were intact when the U.S. invaded. Fortunately, this nasty stuff stayed in the depot despite all the chaos.
Unfortunately, much of the material that was under U.N. jurisdiction did disappear right after the U.S. invasion. In one depot, the U.S. troops acknowledged that a long range rocket depot was still intact, left for the Battle of Bagdad, and when they came back, it was all gone. This particular depot was about 50 miles from the Iraq/Iran border, and there is some thought that maybe the Iranians saw their chance to grab some "Weapons o' Mass Destruction" before anyone noticed. Then again, Iraqis may have entered this compound and sold its contents for scrap. We will never know.
depleted uranium (Score:4, Insightful)
all the while, pumping the iraqi countryside full of depleted uranium [globalresearch.ca]... :-P
The Iraqi nuclear program in the 1980s. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Iraq did have a nuclear program, back in the 1970s and 1980s. It didn't go well. They couldn't get any of the separation processes to work. A mid-level physicist in the program defected to the US and wrote a book about it, which gives a view of the strange world of working for Saddam Hussein. If he was annoyed at a manager, he sent them to a torture camp to be tortured for a while, then put them back to work. If they did well, he gave them one of his ex-mistresses.
Iraq tried to build calutrons [newscientist.com], which do isotope separation in one or two steps but can process only tiny amounts of material. So it's necessary to build a large number of them to enrich enough uranium for a weapon. The US built some sizable calutron plants during WWII, but they were too slow to be useful when fed with natural uranium. They were used as a final upgrade step for uranium partially enriched in the gaseous diffusion plants. None of the other nuclear powers ever bothered much with calutrons, except little research-sized units. Iraq never actually built enough calutron capacity to accomplish much.
Iraq's yellowcake (uranium oxide, unenriched) is left over from that era. Extraction of yellowcake from raw ore is an ordinary chemical process [chemcases.com], usually performed somewhere near the mine. It's the first and easiest step of the process, and that's as far as Iraq got.
Yellowcake - more info (Score:3, Interesting)
Couldn't believe that, but 6 mon
Before the Freepers crow... (Score:2)
Of course, they likely won't let the facts dissuade them.
The uranium... (Score:3, Funny)
The uranium in form of 4-inch, cone-tipped bars was hidden under a thin layer of soil and embedded in walls in and around several military complexes of Iraq. Photo of one of one of the uranium bars [wikipedia.org]
This is another proof that Iraq attempted to produce nuclear WMD.
The point was the lie itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because the lie was used to trick the American people into starting a war that has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, wrecked our economy, undermined our position in the world and put us in a far less secure position, killed hundreds of thousands of people, destabilized the middle east, and lined the pockets of the friends and supporters of the people who told the lie with money stolen from the US treasury on the basis of that lie?
The problem was it was a lie, crafted and used to achieve a specific dishonorable result. The fact that other claims that could have been made about superficially similar subjects were true (and were known to be true at the time) has absolutely no bearing on the situation.
--MarkusQ
Beware of coolaid overdose (Score:5, Informative)
At first I thought you were joking.
Bush, Cheney, et al told so many lies in the lead up to the Iraq war that it's difficult to keep track of them all. Just off the top of my head (and sticking to things we know):
To claim that they didn't lie about anything regarding Iraq is either a sign of coolaid overdose, sock puppetry, or terminal cluelessness.
--MarkusQ
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
maybe there should be an 'anonymous moron' option ?
Re:Wow. So a lot of that was much ado about nothin (Score:5, Informative)
Further: the reason Saddam had the Yellowcake was because he was actually putting together a nuclear reactor [wikipedia.org] back in the 1980s. Thanks to bombings by Israel and the US, Saddam had no choice but to sit on the damaged reactors and fuel, and try to build a nuclear research program.
The fact that the nuclear fuel he'd had for years is completely unenriched just tells you how little cash he had to spend on the program. Simple fact: nuclear programs are fucking expensive, because enrichment is not a simple process. This is why I laughed my ass off when Bush claimed that Iraq might have a nuclear program to fear, even after we bombed them to the stone age in 1991, and then strangled their international trade for the next decade. Complete bullshit!
It was in Iraq but Saddam coudln't get it (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
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.
This was old yellowcake from the first Iraqi attempt at a nuke plant (which the Israelis bombed in 1981). Saddam couldn't use it because there were UN inspectors watching it.
So it was plausible that he might want some, but not true that he tried to get it from Niger. That was concocted evidence.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear bombs aren't like gunpowder. You can't build them by mixing uranium with charcoal in your backyard.
And that assumes you have uranium at all. The yellowcake would have to be heavily refined ("enriched") first, by spinning it in a centrifuge an unbelievable number of times
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So Yellowcake is about as easy to turn into nuclear weapons as raw iron ore can be turned into fighter airplanes
Heh. I'd love to see the airplane you'd make out of iron. Iron is very very heavy. A better way to put it would have been "...as raw bauxite can be turned into fighter airplanes", as they are largely made of aluminum, not iron.
Re:Wow. So a lot of that was much ado about nothin (Score:4, Interesting)
Carbonized iron (steel) is about three times the weight of aluminum but also nearly twice as strong, so you need less of it.
Here [globalspec.com]'s what the plane would look like.
(The USSR didn't have much aluminum - or any way to import it - in WW2.)
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
But I guess many stupid/ignorant people will read the headlines and "understand" it the same way you did.
No wonder Bush got re-elected.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow - that's a novel use of the AC. I hope that just for that, your original post gets modded into oblivion.
No balls, no brain, and no insight. Interesting combination.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your spelling aside, what exactly are you putting your ass on the line for? You said it best yourself:
"Hell, someday, maybe there will be an administration that will stop thinking of military troops as a well equipped police force, I doubt it but one can hope."
Why enlist if you disagree? We should boycott the army and stock up on privately owned weapons to defend ourselves if our representatives won't withdraw the troops. The war is totally wasteful and we're just going to prompt more criminal attacks. We s