Your conclusions are both anachronistic and genetically flawed. First, I ask you, where did you see a “the Wilson editorial suggesting that no enriched uranium was available to Saddam”? You take facts and turn them around. Then you conclusions make your shoes look like a hat.

Wilson’s mission to Niger was to find out if a sale had taken place. Intelligence reports had already said no, but the VPs office didn’t believe those reports. Ambassador Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick also said no sale had taken place and that it was very difficult to get uranium away from the Niger mines.

So why did you just make that up about Wilson “suggesting that no enriched uranium was available to Saddam”? Because you have preconclusion before investigation.

Why won’t people like you pay attention to the facts instead of this sort of revisionism?

We already had reports about the uranium Saddam had. This is old news. The reports of WMD are bogus. Yellowcake isn’t WMD. It isn’t even quality enough to make a dirty bomb. It would be a most ineffective weapon. And the processing to make it into anything was impossible for Saddam.

So, you have yourself some yellowcake, and yet egg all over your face because you haven’t the foggiest clue what that means. Keep to your concerns about human rights and do your homework next time you pop off suggesting that Joseph Wilson lied or engaged in any dishonesty in his reporting.

If you wish to debate any points related to the Niger/WMD/Plame affair, I’ll engage you in any forum.

Whoa, the n came out of the woodpile on this one. Whoops, I mean the whackoos/nut jobs. I think, there is a good point to be made here. Thanks for bringing the issue out of the msm, where it would die a quiet unlamented death.

This is from the AP story. It sort of conflicts with CSampson’s view that uranium is a toy:
“[e]xposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.

“The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust,” said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

This aint silly putty, CSampson.

Yes, and mr.wilson was reccomened for that job by his supposedly “undercover” wife mrs. plame. it appears mr wilson did lie, or at the very didn’t tell the whole truth. i don’t know, and i don’t really care, which reports supposedly said no, but the British Butler report said it was absolutly true. And if were so untrue, why did the dems have to take the quote out of context? they talked about 16 words, but only compelled to print 10 of them.

csampson Debate? you’re mind is already made up.

Your post is riddled with errors and false assumptions. This stock of uranium, acquired by Iraq in the 1970s and early 1980s, was all declared to the IAEA and has been a matter of public record since before the first Gulf War. I’m no fan of the Bush administration, but they were hardly keeping this “secret.”

The yellowcake was also under IAEA seal, and was subject to IAEA safeguards inspections EVEN DURING THE PERIOD that Saddam did not allow UNSCOM and IAEA inspectors to go to other sites.

Most important, the material is not “partially enriched” … it’s processed from U ore, but not enriched. and if it’s not enriched, you can’t make a fission bomb out of it. Or an effective dirty bomb, for that matter.

From the LA Times:

“U.N. inspectors had documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the senior U.S. official said.”

The only thing about this story that is news is that the yellow cake is now out of Iraq. This is part of the WMD materials stockpile that was already known, documented, and inspected since before the 1991 gulf war.

It is commonplace to say that there were no WMD in Iraq, and this has always been known to be false. There was a large stockpile of WMD-related materials, much of which was sold to Saddam by the US during the ’80s. All of this material was under guard by the UN, and had already been inspected. It was not a problem, until the US invasion exposed it to looting.

The question of whether Saddam had WMD before the war should be rephrased: the relevant question was, did he have WMD _that we didn’t already know about._

Also note that the presence of this yellow cake is completely irrelevant to the Valarie Plame-Wilson story, which is presumably why she didn’t mention it even if she knew about it, which she surely did. Yes, Saddam had yellow cake, which everyone knew about. It was being inspected regularly, so if he tried to make a weapon with it, the IAEA would have known right away, thus it was completely harmless. If, however, he had been secretly acquiring _uninspected_ yellow cake from Niger, that would have been a big deal because it would have meant he was _restarting_ his nuclear program, which had been discontinued before the 1991 war.

In short, this yellow cake is a red herring and is not relevant to the question of whether the invasion was justified.

Why a story as important as this is not all over the main stream media only proves THE FACT that said media is thoroughly biased. It also proves that the left are willing to put the country at risk in order to move their agenda.

You all are naive! Yellow cake does exist and it did exist in Iraq.

The yellow cake uranium in Iraq has been known about since 1991. It’s not a recent discovery. However, the average person likely has no knowledge of this so it seems to have just popped up. Fact is, after Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant in 1981, it was placed in storage and has been there ever since. The UN inspected it after the 1991 Gulf War. This is common knowledge, albeit Joe Average never took notice of it, but you can bet the US government and half dozen others knew all about it. The fact that the US government claimed Iraq was trying to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger sounds too close the 550 tons that was “found” (found my ass, they KNEW it was there for the last 20 years). The 500 ton number is just TOO coincidental. it sounds more like the groundwork to establish the “fact” that Iraq did buy it, except the story was busted before it was ever found.

Now, just how dangerous is yellowcake uranium? Well, I was watching a show on PBS well over a year before the 550 tons was “found” (again, i’m larfing my arse off, they knew it was there for the last 20 years), and the scientist being interviewed said it wasn’t very radioactive at all and not really dangerous. He said they used it to block the doors open. It sounded a bit strange to me, but I did a bit of research and found out he is correct.

Here is a quote regarding it: Yellowcake is not very radioactive, a bit more so than the granite commonly used as a building material (and not considered a health hazard.) However, because yellowcake is a powder, it can easily be inhaled. This is dangerous in the long term. Even workers in uranium mines developed higher rates of cancer years later because they inhaled the dirt containing uranium.

So unless someone was going to make a point to sniff the yellowcake, it posed about as much of a threat as granite. Bwahahahahaha. Again, I’m larfing my arse off. Two words sum up the Bush administration: Bullshit and Moo. Bullshit because, well do i really need to explain? And Moo because like dumb cows that pay no attention to anything until the government tells them to, wouldn’t know for themselves anything. They’re to busy worrying about what Brittney Spears is up to, which is just fine with our Politicos who COUNT on the mass of moo-cow public not to know, not to care, not to study up on issues and not to think for themselves.

If anyone really wants to know what the invasion of Iraq was about (and people, it was NOT WMDs, which should be apparent to anyone with half a brain and one eye), read up (yes get up off your ignorant, indifferent ass and STUDY for yourselves) on the “the wolfowitz doctrine” the “clash of cultures” doctrine and the “democratization of the middle east” (and the rest of the world.

Uranium conclusion

Nuclear expert Norman Dombey, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sussex, has pointed out that the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete; as he noted, “The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger’s uranium mines”.[6] Dombey also noted that Iraq already had some 550 tonnes of uranium compound sitting in its gutted Tuwaitha nuclear research center:

Iraq already had far more uranium than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme. … Nuclear weapons are difficult and expensive to build not because uranium is scarce, but because it is difficult and expensive to enrich U235 from 0.7 per cent to the 90 per cent needed for a bomb. Enrichment plants are large, use a lot of electricity and are almost impossible to conceal. Neither British security services nor the CIA seriously thought Iraq had a functioning enrichment plant that would have justified all the noise about nuclear weapons we heard before the war. When I read of the supposed Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger, I thought it smelt distinctly fishy. … It was a gigantic red herring.[7]

When asked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the conclusions of British intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin stated, “The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We’ve looked at those reports and we don’t think they are very credible. It doesn’t diminish our conviction that he’s going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point.”[8]

London’s Evening Standard daily newspaper dismissed the report’s findings, under the front-page headline “Whitewash (Part Two)”, saying Lord Butler had effectively thrown Tony Blair “a lifebelt” by claiming that Saddam was indeed trying to procure uranium from Niger in 1999 to build a nuclear bomb, and concluding that illicit “material may be hidden in the sand”.[9]

I especially like the coment by Dapper Dan about It being irrelavant since France controls Niger’s uranium mines. They control things so “well” they sold to iraq in violation of UN sanctions during the cease fire after Bush I. It was a cease fire, not a end to war. Sadam agreed to overflites and inspections, yet he continued to shoot at our aircraft. This alone was enough to TAKE HIM OUT. Forget about He murdered and raped thousands, but of course the Iraq’s loved him so much they “supported” him by trying to tear down his statue, accomplishing it with the help of a US tank. The UN “functions” so well they make the Three Stooges look like scholars. They did a “superb” job of inspections with all the obfucations fomented by Sadam. If thinksformyself “feels” yellow cake is no more hazardous than granite perhaps he would like to pave his driveway with it, it would make one hell or a nice YELLOW BRICK ROAD.I even have a recipe for yellow cake muffins I’ll give him. I also hear If you sprinkle it on your lawn, it’s a good fertilizer. “BWAHAHAHA” Question? What was he going to with it when we left? I know! He was going to “build” a YELLOW BRICK ROAD !

Lester Lee said “Forget about He murdered and raped thousands”.

So Saddam was a god–and quite the lady’s man.
Thanks for the info.

Muystang 6 writes “the uranium had the potetial [sic] to make a bomb, either conventional or dirty, that qualifies as [a] WMD to any defense expert.”

Duh…. Hell, any of the Scandinavian countries has that POTENTIAL, and thus Finland has a WMD?

And the rest of his “argument” is equally based on fantasy and wishful thinking.

Christ.

If it’s true that Saddam’s yellow cake was walled off and under no ongoing processing, then it was not an active threat, no matter what the residual knowledge.

So what that Saddam was playing blind man’s bluff with the inspectors? The a–hole was losing that game to the inspectors! His programmes were atrophying every year. Containing Saddam was like keeping a spider under an overturned glass. His power was waning, not waxing.

His bad intent was not a WMD in itself. By definition, a WMD has to be an operational gizmo.

I can appreciate the rightwing being a watchdog of sorts, barking at potential risks before they become actual ones, but a dog that never shuts up and daily misidentifies the postman, the neighbour going to work, kids laughing on the sidewalk becomes little more than a bloody nuisance to the community.

As for this Blogger News Network proud claim “High-quality English language analysis and editorial writing on the news”, I come to my final truly petty bitch, why do Conservatives has so many f—ing spelling and grammar errors? Is it indicative of their thought process? Jumbled syntax implies jumbled thought.

Even in the original blog, the author screws up the possessive pronoun “its” with the contraction “it’s”. The author forms plurals of eponyms with an apostrophe! And what is with “undoubtably” as an adverb? The adverb is “undoubtedtly”. And then there is “embarassing” with one “r”.

“High-quality English language analysis and editorial writing on the news” my ass.

A truly, petty, trivial bitch I know, but since virtually all of the conservative respondents typically savage the language, I cannot but wonder whether that is not a diagnostic measure of their minds.

Sorry.

NUCLEAR MATERIAL VERIFICATION ACTIVITIES

Table 2
Summary of Inspection Results
http://www.iraqwatch.org/un/IAEA/s-23283.htm
Page 2 lists a variety of hard to read compounds, liquids etc but that is only an additional 45 tons or so. If you add that to page ones results of 229 tons that still is only about 275 tons of verified materials.

Where did the extra 275 to 300 tons of yellow cake come from?

That`s all I`ve got. Thanks

and before you say THOSE numbers don’t parse, be aware that the low enriched uranium was removed from Iraq long before the 2003 war. and we’re not talking about the depleted uranium stocks.