This report deserves to be quoted in full:
U.S. Delivers Iraqi Uranium to Canadian Firm
The U.S. military has finished delivering 550 tons of yellowcake uranium — left over from the late Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons-making era — from Iraq to a uranium trading company in Canada, Pentagon officials confirmed to FOX News on Monday.
Cameco, which sells the natural uranium, also called “yellowcake,” to electricity-producing utilities around the world, bought the uranium for an undisclosed price several weeks ago.
To assist in the sale, the U.S. military transported the uranium over the weekend to “ensure its safe transit,” senior Pentagon officials said.
“The Department of Defense was responsible for the safe and secure transfer of materials from Iraq to the country of purchase,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “The cargo was transported by convoy from Tuwaitha nuclear research facility in Baghdad to a secure location in the Green Zone” and then loaded onto a C-17 and flown to an intermediate location via 37 sorties, he said.
Once at that intermediate location, which Whitman declined to reveal, the cargo was shipped to a third country where it was loaded onto a U.S.-flagged cargo ship. It was transported from there to Canada.
Tuwaitha is the facility that was bombed by Israel in 1981 and again by the U.S. during the 1991 Gulf War. It was a centerpiece of Hussein’s nuclear weapons effort, and was looted shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
According to senior Pentagon officials, the U.S. spent an estimated $70 million to ship the yellowcake. Iraq has promised to reimburse the U.S. for the money spent flying the nuclear component.
Yellowcake, depending on market conditions, can be worth anywhere from $60 to $85 per pound.
Officials told The New York Times that while the material could not be used in its current form for a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb, the unstable environment in Iraq, along with the health dangers that can be caused from it sitting around in concentrated forms, encouraged officials to make sure it was put in secure hands.
The Times noted that the yellowcake removed from Iraq is not the same yellowcake that President Bush claimed in his 2003 State of the Union address that Hussein tried to buy from Niger.
FOX News’ Catherine Herridge and Justin Fishel contributed to this report
Now okay, my liberal friends will no doubt pounce on the last sentence of this report as the “Aha!” moment of the article. However, it leaves open the obvious questions:
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Iraq has no natural sources of uranium. The stuff was obviously imported.
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Where did this particular cache of yellowcake uranium come from?
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550 tons of yellowcake is not a small amount. Assuming that only 3 to 5% of uranium found is suitable for nuclear weapons, that still left, potentially, somewhere around 16.5 to 27.5 tons of weapons-grade material that the U.S. establishment press stated was not there.
- Saddam expressed little interest in developing “peaceful nuclear power” as a fig leaf for making bombs as Iran is now claiming. He wanted nuclear weapons.
Will we hear an apology from the media to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of the Bush Administration? Of course not.
But one must pose the obvious question: Certain political opponents of President Bush threatened the President and VP Cheney with impeachment for “lying” about Iraq–under the auspices of “high crimes and misdemeanors”–because no weapons of mass destruction were found there. If the means for making WMDs (quite a lot of them, actually) have now, in truth, been found, what can the people falsely accusing the President be charged with? Libel? At least.
According to my lib friends, “everyone knew” Saddam had no WMDs, which is odd, considering how hard Saddam bluffed the U.S. into thinking that he did. Hell, he even had parts of the CIA and Colin Powell convinced. Powell and Richard Armitage never got over the “missing WMDs” and the damage done to their reputations. That’s partly why, even though Armitage was the one who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to the press, he did not come forward when Scooter Libby was charged with “outing” her as a CIA agent. Will Powell and Armitage now apologize to President Bush? They ought to, but most likely won’t. Will Bush give a full pardon to Scooter Libby? It would seem he would be justified in doing so, but he probably won’t until he’s on his way out of office.
“Bush lied, people died.” That’s been the mantra of the Left for five years now. Enough already. Iraq was a preemptive strike to stop Saddam from developing nuclear weapons. Five hundred and fifty tons of reasons have just been delivered to the Canadians. Was the war justified? You can still consider that a judgment call. However, the “Bush lied” charge should now be laid to rest. Or better, outed, shouted from the rooftops by Republicans, and thrown in the face of Democrats who voted for the war before they voted against it. Time to go on the offensive. Will McCain, et al., have the stones to do it?
Ah, another ill-informed screed from a blogger. Sigh.
“Iraq has no natural sources of uranium. The stuff was obviously imported.”
Incorrect. Evidently you haven’t heard of Ukashat:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/akashat.htm
“Saddam expressed little interest in developing “peaceful nuclear power” as a fig leaf for making bombs as Iran is now claiming. He wanted nuclear weapons.”
Yup, he sure did. Problem is, this yellowcake is from his earlier attempt, pre-Gulf War 1, and wasn’t under his control since the end of that war:
Ref: http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=15698
All this took a few minutes of research – research you could have done if you hadn’t blindly accepted news that fit your set of beliefs. As the kids say these days, EPIC FAIL.
By: Bob on July 16, 2008
at 12:05 am
Your tone could use some work. I’m more willing to listen to contrary arguments if people don’t snark.
That said, try this list of top uranium reserves: http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/u/uranium-reserves.htm
Note that Iraq was not on the list. I’m willing to concede, given the report you cited (and one or two others) that there are uranium mines there. I’ve learned something new. Thank you. There: see how easy politeness is?
The long quotation you’ve noted re: IAEA-sealed uranium in Iraq still leaves open, in my mind, the question of what was being done with that uranium during the years that IAEA was kicked out by Saddam. The fact remains: the stuff was there, in Iraq, “sealed” or not. Saddam had access to it and could have done something with it had he chosen to do so.
You have also not convinced me that Saddam wasn’t pursuing or acting as if he had nuclear weapons. If he hadn’t been so ham-handed about acting that way, he probably would’ve remained contained and in power. Instead, he made the mistake of continuing to pretend that he had WMDs in an environment where the U.S. had already shown itself willing to invade countries that p.o.ed the Bush Administration.
And I would like to reiterate this point: I am not 100% convinced that the war was necessary. Obviously it was not. However, Saddam had access to nuclear material within his country, whenever and wherever he acquired it, and he acted as if he had the willingness and wherewithal to make nuclear weapons. Given those points, I would submit that the WMD justifications used by the Bush Administration–in addition to all the other points used to justify invading Iraq–had a basis in reality.
This is not an epic fail, as you say. You’ve corrected me on one point, unmoved me on another, and failed to see the whole picture. Time to recheck your aim before firing unnecessarily.
By: spacewritinguy on July 16, 2008
at 11:19 pm