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Tanya
Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 13 Aug 2004
Posts: 570
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 Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:25 am Post subject: The Uranium Joe Wilson Didn't Mention |
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Sunday, July 17, 2005 5:08 p.m. EDT
"By April 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein had stockpiled 500 tons of yellowcake uranium at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant south of Baghdad.
That intriguing little detail is almost never mentioned by the big media, who prefer to chant the mantra "Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction" while echoing Joseph Wilson's claim that "Bush lied" about Iraq seeking more of the nuclear material in Niger.
The media's decision to put the Wilson-Plame affair back on the front burner, however, may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for President Bush - giving his administration a chance to resurrect an important debate they conceded far too easily about the weapons of mass destruction threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
First, the facts - from a reliable critic of the White House, the New York Times, which covered the story long after the paper announced it was tightening its standards on WMD news out of Iraq."
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/7/17/171214.shtml |
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Uisguex Jack
Rear Admiral
Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 613
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 2:12 am Post subject: |
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Just some simple reading. I don't know if I agree with it all but it's good reading:
Edward Jay Epstein wrote:
Here: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/2003question/niger_uranium.htm
| Quote: | Question:
The most successful deceptions often use accurate facts that lead their audiences to jump to the wrong conclusion. A case in point is Prime Minister Blair's White Paper asserting that "There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In what way did it succeed and in what way did it fail?
Answer:
The successful part of Blair's "white paper" was its brilliant exploitation of the public confusion between two similar-sounding substances: Uranium and Uranium 235. The crucial difference is that Uranium is not fissile, which means it cannot be split to cause a chain reaction leading to a nuclear explosion, while Uranium-235 is fissile. The fissile material indispensable to making nuclear weapons is heavily-concentrated U-235.
Eleven days earlier, at a Pentagon briefing and slide show, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, using his alias "Senior Defense Official," informed reporters about the danger of Saddam Hussein obtaining fissile material from a foreign supplier. With it, he estimated Iraq could build nuclear weapons in a matter of months. "The key issue here is always fissile material," he said "And that remains probably the only issue, in the case of Iraq." When reporters at the briefing pressed Rumsfeld about whether the US had any intelligence that Iraq had means of obtaining this critical ingredient, he pointedly referred them to CIA Director George Tenet testimony that "our major near-term concern is the possibility that Saddam might gain access to fissile material." But that was as far as he "could" go, he explained.
So, with the press now primed for an answer, Blair ominous-sounding disclosure that "Saddam was seeking to buy "significant quantities of uranium" from an unnamed source in Africa appeared to fill in the missing piece: "African uranium." Saddam's foreign connection, it then leaked out, was Niger, and allegedly Iraq was negotiating to purchase 500 metric tons of its "yellowcake." Yellowcake, or uranium oxide, is precipitated out of the raw ore so it can be efficiently shipped to processors.
The problem here is that yellowcake is not a fissile material. Like the ore it is derived from, it contains only a minute trace of the lethal isotope U-235– a fraction of a percent. To obtain fissile material directly from yellowcake requires a vast technological enterprise.
First, the yellowcake must be converted into uranium hexafluoride. Next, it must be turned under great pressure into a gas. Finally, the U-235 atoms must be separated out of the gas and concentrated into 90 percent U-235. This separation can be done through gas diffusion, which requires forcing the gas through a long series of sub-molecular size membranes. Or it can be done, as in Europe, by centrifuge technology, which requires spinning the uranium hexafluoride gas at extremely high speeds in a cascade of sophisticated centrifuges. Only a few countries in the world have mastered the technology, notably the US, France, Germany, Britain, Japan and Russia, (and most of the other countries in the nuclear game import their fissile material from them under the inspection regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency to fuel power plants and then further enrich it for weapons .)
Iraq did not have a capability in September 2002 to enrich uranium. To be sure, prior to the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was dangerously close to achieving such a capacity. He had assembled a rudimentary arrays of centrifuges that had the potential for enriching uranium isotopes. But as a result of that war, the centrifuges and other enrichment facilities were destroyed by the US, the UN and the International Atomic Energy Agency, as the subsequent invasion confirmed. In any case, Iraq never had the gasification plant to convert it into uranium hexafluoride gas, and without it, Iraq could not produce fissile material even if it secretly obtained the centrifuges. Iraq certainly had access to yellowcake. Whatever the provenance of the "African Uranium," Iraq could retrieve yellowcake from its own phosphate deposits at Al Qaim near the Syrian border. But yellowcake, without the ability to convert it fissile material, was not a threat. The real threat, as both Rumsfeld and Tenet correctly identified, was Saddam acquiring fissile material from abroad. Even though a number of rogue states, such as North Korea, had the ability to supply it to Saddam or his intermediaries, the US had no intelligence it could cite about such possible transactions (nor might it detect any until it was too late).
So Blair's metaphoric "African uranium" managed to fill the gap. Most of the public equated uranium with nuclear weapons.
The failed– and stupid– part of the deception was associating it with forged Niger documents. With the help of the Google search engine, the International Atomic Energy Agency quickly determined that these documents were inauthentic. |
This neglects to deal with some other issues such as:
SBD wrote: | Quote: | Remember those aluminun tubes that the Dems keep saying can not be used for Nuclear Weapons? It seems Judith Miller was at one point on the side of the nuclear weapons theory.
September 10, 2002 Tuesday
COMMITTEE HEARING
COMMITTEE: HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE BOB STUMP (R-AZ) HOLDS HEARING ON IRAQ'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROGRAMS
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE BOB STUMP (R-AZ), CHAIRMAN
LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D.C.
WITNESSES:
DR. DAVID A. KAY, FORMER U.N. CHIEF NUCLEAR WEAPONS INSPECTOR IN IRAQ, U.N. SPECIAL COMMISSION ON IRAQ, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY ASSOCIATION
DR. RICHARD O. SPERTZEL, FORMER HEAD OF BIOLOGY SECTION, UNITED NATIONS SPECIAL COMMISSION ON IRAQ
Quote:
WELDON: You share that view?
KAY: I share that view. I think it's -- in the areas of nuclear and ballistic missiles a somewhat similar problem. When you combine money with how far the Iraqis are and the way technology progresses, it's become a much worse problem. Let me give you the case of the aluminum centrifuge rotors that was in the weekend piece by Michael Gordon (ph) and Judith Miller (ph). The Iraqi centrifuge pieces that a team I led discovered were made of maraging steel. Maraging steel is harder to get access to. It's a more specialized technology. Not everyone can produce it.
They were going to carbon fiber rotors because carbon fiber winding machines, although controlled because they're relevant to missile technology, as you know, Mr. Weldon, in addition to centrifuges were at that point where they were becoming generally available because of Callaway golf clubs, high performance fly rods and a whole series of other issues. So they were on the slope and they understood it. By going to carbon fiber they were better off. Going to aluminum is even easier because the number of countries that have the capabilities to extrude high performance aluminum tubes is almost any country that has a machine tool industry.
So the problem has become worse. We have not found an effective way of dealing with it. But let me tell you I am pessimistic that there is an easy way to deal with it other than replacing the regime. We're very much, in talking about export controls and all, and I'm certainly in favor of them relevant to Iraq, it's very much like putting your finger in the dike when in fact, you ought to be examining the nature of the flood control system as a whole there. And it's why you have the problem. It's much worse than it was in the '90s.
WELDON: One final question, Mr. Chairman.
And this gets to the point that you both made which I was going to ask. You've already answered it. And that is that you're convinced that the only solution here is a regime change. And I'm coming to that conclusion very quickly myself. But knowing the kinds of considerations that our colleagues have to make on an up and coming vote, I think it's going to behoove us to take whatever step we can to convince overwhelmingly our members that that's the course of action we have to take. So therefore, I happen to believe that we have to put more pressure on Russia.
SBD |
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..........................................................................Just good reading |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 12:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The most successful deceptions often use accurate facts that lead their audiences to jump to the wrong conclusion. A case in point is Prime Minister Blair's White Paper asserting that "There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." In what way did it succeed and in what way did it fail? |
Well now, it appears Mr. Epstein's article does exactly what he is accusing PM Blair of doing. Using the truth in a way to deceive. The dummy.
While Yellowcake is not fissile material, it is the source from which fissile material is obtained. That's why Saddam was trying to surriptiously purchase it from any source he could find.
Mr. Epstein is attempting to make that fact unimportant when it is the key. 500 tons of it? What the hell does Mr. Epstein think Saddam was stockpiling that stuff for? It can only be used for one thing. He sure wasn't buying it to make baby formula.
Another attempt by a 'we don't care if America is nuked as long as we GET George Bush' idiot to deceive the American public.
Mr. Epstein, you speak with a 'forked tongue'.
Dusty |
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Uisguex Jack
Rear Admiral
Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 613
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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I am a huge Epstein fan but I agree completly. This is why I quote SBDs
post about the Alluminum tubes.
What the hell, I think we got into Iraq just in time. Maybe a little late.
Those damn trucks were'nt for making Hellium for artillery balloons. They are exactly what Powell described to the U.N. Mobile WMD factorys.
There is so much damn lieing going on I can't figure out how stupid we are all supposed to be. Starting with John Kerry..... War Hero Reporting for Duty... right up to today with Joe Wilson. Shees Louise. |
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