Disconfirmations Disconfirmed: Saddam Had Nuke Program (Updated)

What a gift to Dubya on his 62nd birthday!
Once again, the Dems have proven themselves to be liars.

Don't hold your breath for the MSM to highlight this - or even report on it!

And how long will it take for the MSM to apologize to our intelligence organizations and the Bush administration? My guess is until November 5, 2008.

This will die away, unless Bush and McCain or Limbaugh keep it alive. The media will not report the truth, since what we have is a media obsessed with Marxist ideals.

As far as I'm concerned, this completely justifies the war. You can also see David Kay's videos on YouTube saying we were lucky to have stopped Saddam Hussein when we did.

DEMOCRATS LIED, SOLDIERS DIED.

This is the biggest find since 911. It should have a profound effect on the thinking of the average uninformed voter as to what party is best at defending the United States. This is great news. Thank God for George W. Bush, that he stood his ground facing all the polls, all the cut and run lefties. The World is a safer place because of George W. Bush.

It's been said that the first casualty of war is the truth. How interesting to learn that this aspect of the war is a reality. What a great vindication.

Of course, I don't think the media trumpets will blare beyond the AP report and no apology from the liberal bloggers or media outlets will ensue.

Also, unfortunately, I feel that Conservatives in office won't push this matter and stick it to 'em either.

This just makes me sick. The damage has long since been done. This news will illicit a big ho hum.

I saw in another report that the yellowcake was heavily kept secret and heavily guarded for all these years for fear that bad guys would get access to it. I suppose that is why the Bush Administration never defended themselves(?)

But Saddam wasn't a threat! Arf! Arf! Arf!

The only better gift given to the GOP today was John Kerry's announcement that McCain has poor judgment. Dems, the gifts that keep on giving.
B Gunn
East Texas Rancher
Mother of serving officer

Here are an important two sentences in the article:

"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."

I have always thought Saddam had WMD's. He had forteen months to hide them.

When have the Stalinists (aka the Democrats) ever been right -- especially when it comes to foreign policy? Their views are clouded with the desire for power. Cheers.

Joe Wilson and his wife are posers "of the first order". Cheers.

I was going to point out that the AP report said this was a secret because the reporter wrote, "...a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans."

The existence of the yellowcake was not a secret as was shown by Rick Moran in 2005 American Thinker article. Rick was only wrong about the quantity - he was 50 tons short. Only the operation to fly the Y-cake from Iraq to Diego Garcia and then by ship to Canada was a secret.

Now we have the problem of Canadians with yellowcake! ;)

The AP actually released that news!!!!
Did their favorite photographer get a picture of it, or at least fake one for them?
This is one piece you can be damned sure is true if it got past the B

It just goes to show, if you wait long enough the truth comes out! GW has been vindicated! Hurrah!

Without enrichment, yellowcake can only be used for reactor fuel. And, with no enrichement program...well, Iraq wasn't producing nor could they produce a nuclear weapon.

If you want to keep wanking off to mushroom cloud fantasies, that's fine, I guess.

Just don't expect anyone with a brain to join you.

The final paragraph is "snarky", but that's why I like it? Wilson and his wife should both be considered traitors (her especially, because she knew all along that he was lying; she worked on that project and knew how it was REALLY going!).

I believe that Bush 43 will be rated at the same level as Truman, which makes him tied for second for Presidents in my lifetime (Reagan being #1, Nixon and Carter tied for last - Nixon for corruption, Carter for gross incompetence).

Um.......
This is yellowcake known to be held by Iraq, and sealed/stored since 1991. It was ADDITIONAL yellowcake that Saddam was alleged to be acquiring.
The stuff already known by the IAEA and already secured and stored doesn't count.
Sorry.

We all know that Iraq was building the Osirak reactor which Israel destroyed 27 years ago. If you check the location, you will find that it was located at Tuwaitha, precisely where this Uranium was located. Is there any reason to suspect that this yellowcake was not part of the Osirak complex?

This is really news?

I always felt Bush was right! Because of the lying press, we may get a muslim president who hates my country.

Sadly, this info will make no difference to liberals since their belief in truth is that it is relative, so they'll be able to ignore this and continue in their sanctimonious ignorance. They have found wmd's many times before but they were old. Now, every liberal will bemoan old undetonated WWI and WWII bombs, land mines and chemical weapons. Old wmd's that Saddam had were obviously no danger though. God Bless America, at least those who love Him!

will the msm be shouting this from the roof tops tomorrow morning so everyone will know,,,i think not. thanks AT

Those of us who have always trusted George W. knew that Sadham had a nuclear program and a lot of yellow cake. The communists and fellow leftists in the democrat party are finished. They can't come out of this one anyway but finished.

God Bless George W. for his service to his country and the world.

Our satellite surveillance picked up large convoys headed from Iraq into Syria just before we invaded. I guess it never occurred to those lefty geniuses to wonder what might be in those trucks.
Vindication is sweet, ain't it. Ok everybody, try not to gloat too much next time you see your Lib friends, it would be unseemly (I will have a hard time controlling myself too, but I'll try).
But hey, these are the fruits of reasoning, well formed opinions and the ability to question what you are told by those who deem themselves 'experts'.

It is amazing that search for weapons which lasted over two years missed this.
Unbelievable.

I never doubted that GWB acted in good faith - and if the libs were honest they would admit - that they believed him.

I never doubted that GWB acted in good faith - and if the libs were honest they would admit - that they believed him.

The incredible part is that these are the same people who now extoll the virtues of an Obama presidency. Realyy makes you want to vote for this guy.

Credibility, what credibility?

Now, Joe and Valerie should be tried for defamation of character of a sitting president, along with all the demorats who have been committing character assassination of a loyal American. God Bless George Bush!

The article clearly states that the yellow cake was there since and before 1991. What vindication is there? I don't see it. If they found gas centrifuges, and other stuff that was recently used, then that's news. This isn't news other than the stuff he had since before the Gulf War is out of the country. See here>> "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." A bit over reaching if you ask me.

For progressives To accuse the conservative community of deluding themselves is ironic considering how fast the entire left joined the Cult of Human Caused Global Warming. In fact the polling director's comment:
"To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq." could very easily be re-written to say;
"To support vice president Gore and to accept that he took the U.S. on a trip to fantasyland based on false assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Gore supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about Climate Change."
Interestingly enough it doesn't take a genious to realize that Saddam Hussein had all the necessary ingredients to create weapons of mass destruction even if he had already disposed of the tangible ingredients. He had the technicians and the scientists with the knowledge and skills to create WMD's, including nuclear weapons. Just as Iran does! He was within a few years of breaking the UN embargo with the help of European players more eager for his money than concerned about world security.
The only thing that kept that from happening was W's bold move in invading Iraq and taking out Saddam and his plans for becoming the dominant force in the middle east. None of the geniuses on the left seemed to be able to figure that one out!

I can't wait to hear all about this on all the networks tonight!....oh...nevermind...

Thanks to American Thinker, we get the REAL news that the socialist reporters work so hard to cover up. This news WILL be ignored by our Leftest Press, but tens of millions in this country care about the truth. Thanks Thinker!!

I can't wait for for KosKids to spin their tales of how the U.S. government secretly snuck all of this into Iraq so that it could be found now.

I sincerely believe that all of their hatred for the U.S. is based in their deep self-loathing from their internal knowledge that everything they believe in is a lie.

This is huge! Iraq actually HAD WMD's, just as the President indicated numerous times. This proves unequivocally that Bush didn't lie about Iraq or WMD's therein. So why isn't this all over the broadcast and print media? Oh, wait, ... nevermind.

And, not a word elsewhere of this. And, it is irrelevant, now that we are winning. Right?

I don't imagine you will let my comments through, but it seems clear to me that this was a very old weapons program, long abandoned. From the article you quoted:
"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."

So, just as we "Dems" have been saying all along, there was no weapons program that needed to be destroyed (which was the reason that we invaded Iraq, not just because they had a weapons program 20 years ago).

American thinker,
Sorry. Please use this one:
-------------
Here's what the feckless Associated Press left out of the story:

For many years now the Bush administration has kept quiet about the evidence of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program. All the while naysayers chanted "Bush lied, people died" until it has become conventional wisdom.

But some of the Democrat naysayers knew the truth about Saddam's weapons program all along and still perpetuated the fiction that Bush had lied about the rationale for the Iraq war. New York's own feculent Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer and all the Democratic leadership, including the unscrupulous majority leader Harry Reid, and presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama participated in this smear for their own political advantage.

They knew President Bush, a principled man, would not and could not defend himself without jeapordizing national security. They took advantage of a president who loves his country more than his own reputation.

Think about that before you pull the lever in November.

To the Sharon Begley's of the world: there is a certain percentage of Americans that can smell a bogus push poll a mile away. All the polls concerning WMD & WMD programs were worded in such a way as to guarantee a specific result. The only reason to offer a bogus push poll is so journalists can create the news, and it was obvious what news they were looking to create. The poll results were a referendum on the trustworthiness of the press. They didn't like the results and struck back. Now dead tree media is dying primarily because the public has lost faith in their reporting. With this latest embarrassment perhaps the old guard media has finally struck out.

what do we really know about BHO? With a liberal President, congess, a liberal Supreme Court,I am for divinding the country in half...lets see if the Liberals can keep their half..not a chance!

Several poster have seized on a couple of lines in the AP story to the effect that the UN had documented and safeguarded the yellowcake. They imply that this was all done before the invasion of Iraq. If that is the case, I find it passing strange that there was seemingly no mention of this yellowcake at the time. Would they have not tried to get it moved? Did the UN trust Sadaam with the stuff as he ignored UN resolution after UN resolution? Exactly how did the UN safeguard the material? Were they safeguarding it as the regime fell and in the turbulent days immediately following?

I think the AP had to report the story; but then they put a nice little spin on it to mitigate the impact. We see in this thread the left's reaction. Oh, nothing changes.

I suspect that some time in the distant future the rumors about the Russian truck convoy moving material from Iraq to Syria in the days before the invasion will be revisited and the truth will be known. The Left's spin machines will be ready dismiss that also.

BobG, The yellowcake is pretty much worthless without the centrifuges to convert it. As noted in the AP article it would not even be usable as a dirty bomb. That's why such emphasis was placed on Iraq having purchased those aluminum tubes a few years back.. They would have made it possible to convert the yellow cake to usable uranium.

To the few trolls posting here stating that the yellowcake goes back to 1991: So what - IT WAS THERE... proving it was Sadaam's WMD material of choice... you are so brainwashed with BSD (Bush Derangement Syndrome) that you simply cannot accept the truth even when it is right in your face.

I find it to be amazing. It's the same game Rick Santorum played when he tried to claim we found WMS.

The yellow cake is not a new discovery.

Iraq's government sold the yellow cake to Canida.

If the yellow cake was an example of WMD's being found, Pres. Bush would have claimed way back when victory when it was found.

BobG,

The IAEA reports are available to all. The latest dates from 1999.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/07/it-must-suck-being-joe-wilson-today.html

You may want to take this opportunity to modify your conspiracy theory to include them.

Right now the tally is: Iraq, Syria, Russia, Joe Wilson, Valery Plame, the AP, and the UN conspiring to deny George Bush his deserved credit. Did I miss any co-conspirators?

There isn't some big conspiracy against hiding WMD's from the American people. You can sit there and just take any evidence you want and turn it into "OMG THEY HAD NUKES! WE WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG" Go spend your time focusing on REAL issues.

Bob, this was mentioned. This is old news that even American Thinker reported on in 2004.

This story is all about Saddam's pre 1995 information.

See here:
http://rotstar.blogspot.com/2008/07/saddams-yellowcake-fitting-resolution.html

Today we know Saddam planned on reconstituting his nuclear program, but this wasn't it.
David

I wonder if the sham prosecution of Scooter Libby will be revisited?

BobG,

The IAEA reports are available to all. The latest dates from 1999.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/07/it-must-suck-being-joe-wilson-today.html

You may want to take this opportunity to modify your conspiracy theory to include them.

Right now the tally is: Iraq, Syria, Russia, Joe Wilson, Valery Plame, the AP, and the UN conspiring to deny George Bush his deserved credit. Did I miss any co-conspirators?

Please note the following quote by a "senior US Official" from the original article:

"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."

"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."

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

How many times can the MSM / Left be wrong and not 'fess up? Let me begin to count the ways:
(1) The surge will not work
(2) There was no WMD
(3) Marines massacred civilians at Haditha
(4) The Iraqi's do not want democracy
(5) Oil for war

This story about the (existence of) yellowcake is very old news and it is true that it doesn't measure up to proof that Hussein had a nuke weapons program after 1991. However, it does call attention to two very important issues.
The first is the Bush admin's failure to effectively communicate certain realities...ones that provided the left with tons of ammunition of their own. Bush and co. should have destroyed the "no stockpiles of wmd" claim by pointing out that this wasn't the litmus test for justification of the invasion in the first place. It was Hussein's continued non-compliance of SC resolutions, specifically 1441. Whether or not stockpiles of wmd were found is irrelevant (except that it does represent a world-wide intelligence failure, as everyone believed Hussein still had those stockpiles.) Even if Hussein had destroyed all of his programs and materials, he still would have been in material breach of 1441 and other prior resolutions, all of which called for a full accounting of those materials. This was to ensure that they did not fall into the hands of Hussein's Islamist buddies. (There were other examples of material breach as well) Perhaps if Tony Snow had been in charge at the time, this point would have been properly made...and driven home. Instead, we had a pantywaist (and liar) named Scott McClellan that was easily intimidated by the leftwing media, and apparently, nobody in the admin. was sharp enough to stave off the "no wmd" attack. Again, this is a poor communication issue.
The second, broader issue is whether or not the invasion was both legally and morally justified. It was indeed.
We all know about Hussein's mass murder/genocide of his own people. This establishes the moral justification, beyond any shadow of a doubt. It is very similar to Clinton's bombing of Serbia to stop the genocide/mass murder of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, which, btw, was also conducted without UN authorization. Funny, isn't it? Nobody on the Left (or here in Europe) is screaming for Clinton to appear in The Hague. Why? Because that genocide and mass murder was taking place in Europe. That is intolerable. Hussein's actions were tolerable because they took place in the ME. Gotta love the Left!
For legal justification, just read all 17 of the SC resolutions carefully and you will come to the honest conclusion that Hussein's Iraq was indeed a threat to the US - as a state sponsor of international terrorism that maintained the people, procedures, and will to manufacture wmd AND use them (through proxies) against the US and allies.

"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."

Wowow. They had Yellowcake. And? That's not justification for this Iraqi War. Just because I have eggs doesn't mean I can bake a cake...you need a lot more than that

There's another slight problem here. WMDs are not necessarily nuclear. Saddam's precedent for using the things was against domestic Kurdish rebels who were killed and maimed by the thousands with mustard gas.

Consider a New York Times article from 2006-06-23, that cites evidence from commercial photographic satellites that during the Allied invasion of Iraq, truck convoys headed into Jordan and thence to Aqaba, where things seem to have been transferred to a distinctive ship. That ship then seems to have sailed to the Sudan.

Given the bloody murder in the Sudan, consider how irresponsible it would be on the part of the West to have denied the existence of Iraqi WMDs should mustard gas be introduced to the carnage. It's been done before.

Short of that, where is the stuff anyhow?

If it makes you feel better, congrats on finding uranium we've known about for 17 years.

Can we go home now?

To Henri Alleg, who said "Without enrichment, yellowcake can only be used for reactor fuel. And, with no enrichement program...well, Iraq wasn't producing nor could they produce a nuclear weapon."

Please note that back in August of 2004, American Thinker was already reporting on the presence of yellowcake uranium in Iraq. At that time, here is what they said: "....there was no peaceful use for development of the yellowcake into nuclear fuel, since both the French and Russian reactors had been destroyed decades ago. Yet personnel from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency noted the presence of depleted uranium onsite. This means that some enrichment did, in fact, take place since depleted uranium is a natural byproduct of the enrichment process."

So, you see....enrichment WAS taking place. That's not too hard for you to understand, is it? What IS hard to understand is why anti-war liberals refuse to accept the truth even when it is staring them in the face?

I think what disgusts me most about this entire issue is the blatant bias of the MSM. They seem to be so firmly lodged in the Democratic court that no good news concerning Iraq makes it above the fold. What is even more appalling is the move of the left to trample the only voices of opposition remaining. It is not enough for the Democrats to own a clear advantage in television and print news outlets, they want it all. They want to again promote the fairness doctrine in an attempt to crush the last remaining bastion of conservatism. Talk radio is under constant fire from the liberal left. It seems to me that this has been done before. A political movement attempting to control the press, crush any dissenting opinion, trample any news that shows the party in a poor light.

How long will it take the average John or Jane Q. Citizen to wake up and see what the Democrats are up to? How long will the Obama disciples blindly follow without looking at issues? How long will the MSM continue to excuse away any inconvenient facts for the left?

The real story here is how frighteningly little even well educated Americans know about nuclear synthesis, weapons involving all forms of radiation etc. and most importantly, just what is involved in the mining, storing, creation of weapons of mass destruction-or the possibility of the new uses of these weapons for limited-yes limited- destruction.

You can work yourself into a frenzy about yellowcake but ask anyone here exactly where this fits into the overall picture, for that matter what it is. You can get worked up over Iran but about what exactly? So too, North Korea--we are all using this issue as a partisan flashpoint without understanding the danger.

Does AQ Khan ring a bell? Sunburst missiles? Straits of Hormuz? How about our not so nice enemies operating on a shoestring or unguarded foreign bases with real bad concoctions in the Euro/Asian hinterlands?

As far as yellowcake-it sounds sexy and at the same time ominous-but its old news; we've known about this nonissue for years. That's why the administration hasn't brought this up. It would simply throw gasoline on the fire of the Iraq war debate.

Why did this writer bring this up now? To get a raise? Support McCain? Bait Bush into grabbing onto this loaded nonissue? Oh, and maybe to support Obama indirectly. Who knows but we all better take a crash course in nuclear fusion so that we are truly prepared to meet the enemy head on. That's the real way to support our government; these are uninformed and totally inaccurate opinions here desperately seeking to justify actions none of you (and me)know the half of. Get informed, then argue about he said, she said--you did that in school with great results, now your life depends on the facts available to you.

Thanks for reading and support the troops defending us all. BH

PS It must be fun to be the President where you get to act on information you can only disclose a fraction of and then your country gets to bang each other and you about things they really know nothing about. No thanks, I pass on that job.

This is old news. It was uncovered in 2004 and reported.

While Saddam planned on reconstituting his nuclear program, this is not it.

Here is a summary of the yellow cake.
http://rotstar.blogspot.com/2008/07/saddams-yellowcake-fitting-resolution.html
David

The most idiotic part of the "Dem's" arguments here is that Saddam purchased 550 Metric Tons of Yellowcake, just to store it in drums until it decomposed! Nope, no "ongoing" nuclear program here! Just storing it for a retirement investment! In five years, if Saddam was still in power, where would his nuclear program be right now? What would have happened with this stuff without the invasion? I guess Saddam would have just eventually sold it to Canada himself, after all, he had no program and no use for it! And why was he trying to buy more? Oh, yeah, that 401K account he had at Baghdad Fidelity! I wonder, do Liberals actually know how stupid they sound?

All right, LET'S discuss something else, since this is such "old news". How about England setting free a known terrorist who was one of Osama Bin Ladin's advisors, and it was proven he was behind the plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport? Not only did England slap us in the face by letting this man go, they give him 300.00 a month for life. This is their law. England might as well have thrown in a free airline ticket to the U.S. so he can come back and finish the job.

sometimes I wonder if there are any sane people left in the world, and whether they give a rats patoot about anyone besides themselves.

At least Rush, Savage, Hannity, etc. have something new to froth about. Obama's middle name has been beaten to death. And you folks on the right now have a "new" non-issue to be rabid about! With every irrelevant piece of information you seize upon, you make yourselves look pettier and pettier. Thanks for ensuring a victory for the Democrats!

If you check into this, you'll quickly find that the uranium a) was not weapons grade and b) was well known to the UN and IAEA and was being stored legally by Saddam's government. It was legally in Iraq according to international law.

But I doubt that's going to stop the idiots in your midst. Clutch at any straw folks, its all you really have.
I wondered if the right wing echo chamber would use this as "proof" that the WMD claims were true after all. I got even better than I hoped, as not only do they use it that way, but they reveal how dishonest they are by the way they have done this.

From later in the same article:

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.

1) Will this impact the campaign?
2) Will McCain use this argument?

Alice - After their reactors were bombed to the ground, Iraq had no use for the yellowcakes. UN inspectors after Gulf War I had access to this facility and audited the whole place. The inspections made to Iraq in all those years included a trip to Tuwaitha to check if the seals were tampered or the quantity of yellowcake reduced.

Any enrichment, post-1991 is news for the entire world. Please share the same with your government which spent $1 billion looking for them in 2003-06.

The Left always made the distinction of what Saddam had BEFORE the war, found by the UN inspectors versus what was found when we entered the country. To them, nothing of WMD in Iraq mattered that was already discovered by UN inspectors or even that was in the country since the Gulf War.

AP says Saddam did have drums of "yellow cake" and that the UN was guarding it (not destroying it). So, does this mean that when Saddam kicked the inspectors out of the country he was free to use the yellow cake in the resumption of his nukes program?

And there is no doubt the Wilsons were political liars. Wilson's own report, after his CIA investigation concerning Saddam's quest for yellow cake in Africa, said Saddam was working in Africa to secure yellow cake.

Knowing the report was classified, the Wilsons stated the opposite of his real findings to Americans for the sole purpose of discrediting the President in the American people's eyes. Bush's State of the Union speech concerning yellow cake was based, in part, on the recent intellegence supplied by Joe Wilson.

Many say that when history is written, Bush will be found justified and the Left will be found to have been wrong and liars. Who writes American history in our Universities, people? Wake up! The Left will never tell on itself or discredit itself. There may be some "extremist right wing" professor of history who exposes the truth; but it will be his word against the mainstream of "historians."

David Lee Rugenstein

- If you still don't know go to

www.discoverthenetwork.org

and you will discover the ramifications of Obama.

HE IS MARXIST through and through!

From Gordon Prather, former chief nuclear scientist of the U.S. Army:

"What good would yellowcake -- a mixture of Uranium oxides -- have been to the Iraqis? Yellowcake contains less than 0.3% U235. You need uranium enriched to 90% U235 to make a nuke. You need to be able to convert yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride -- a solid at room temperature. Then you need to gasify UF6 and run it through cascades of gas centrifuges, tens of thousands of them. Iraq never had the capability of producing kilogram amounts of HEU, and what capability they had was utterly destroyed during the Gulf War and its aftermath and never rebuilt."

Yellowcake is useless and pointless.

Yellowcake isn't a WMD and isn't evidence of a nuclear weapons program. Iraq did not have the technology to enrich the yellowcake and make it usable for anything, not even to generate electrical power.

When Joe Wilson told us Bush "lied" about the yellowcake it was a big deal to the Left. It was outright treason. Now that yellowcake has been found, it's now become a "non-issue," "useless" and "pointless," just like every other fact that emerges after one of their lies. They send their minions scurrying around the internet like a bunch of stunned cockroaches telling everyone it's "no big deal" or other some such thing. The same methodology used when we start coming across facts that we're winning a war that they all told us was "unwinnable." You know a liberal is desperate when they start quoting military personnel to support their "position." All very amusing to watch. All I know is that there is no Saddam and there is no more yellowcake in Iraq thanks to you know who. Make of that what you will.

What disappoints most concerning the Bush administrations handling of the facts surrounding the war is what they didn't tell us. They did a poor job informing the public about the true location of the weapons programs. While Saddam still had weapons in country, he also had a full blown accelerated weapons program being run in Libya. With the continued threat of discovery by UN inspectors (UNMOVIC), Saddam devised a way to continue his weapons programs. (see: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/congress/house1.htm0 scroll down to Libya and Iraq) Hundreds of Iraqi scientists were sent to Libya to operate and oversee WMD development. Perhaps it was a strategic decision to not make a big deal about what was found in Libya and how they managed to get Gaddafi to hand it over. (google Libyan weapons flown to Tennessee)The programs in Libya were joint programs between Iraq and Libya ... with Syria and Egypt throwing in money. How embarassing for the IAEA's Mohamed El Baradei, his own country of origin involved in illegal nuclear proliferation and right under his nose. When I think about the Bush administraions reasons for not revealing the big picture in a big way I have to think they didn't want to muddy the waters regarding our reasons for going to war In Iraq for fear it would undermine a clear cut casus belli ... which was more than met with the 'old yellowcake'. Joe Wilson had to know that Libya was buying the yellowcake directly. It didn't have to come directly to Iraq to be a threat. Selfserving fools will always be exposed.

"One example was an article by Sharon Begley in the Wall Street Journal titled People Believe a 'Fact' That Fits Their Views Even if It's Clearly False."
----------------------------
Wow!

You just proved what Sharon Begley wrote; You (and most of the posters here) will grasp any straw if you think it can justify your support for the war in Iraq.

If Saddam really had WMD, why have Bush, Rummy, Cheney and CIA admitted that they were wrong about it?

The biggest joke here must be the title of the blog, "American Thinker".

It should be called "American Idiot".

Supertzar

Eh, the entire world acknowledged the fact that Saddam had WMD's, every nation, every single intelligence agency.

He also had 14 months to move it. The Bush Administration knew about the yellow cake, and other related materials for a long time and never mentioned it when it could have been used to defend their position.

I find it refreshing that a politician and leader in this day and age will put the security of emerging Iraq and our American Troops in front of his political legacy.

Who's your leader?

You fail to mention something very important about this yellow cake and the nuclear devices. They were put under UN weapons inspectors seals after the FIRST Gulf War. Those seals were STILL INTACT when our troops invaded, broke the seals and inspected the facilities before moving on to Baghdad, leaving said facilities unlocked, unsealed and unguarded. Nearby residents quickly grabbed the barrels of yellow cake, dumped the yellow cake out on the ground and took the barrels home to use as rain barrels. In other words, folks, Saddam's uranium had been under UN seal for at least 5 years before Bush invaded.

The UN was documenting and guarding this stuff?
The same UN that gave Saddam pass after pass after pass when he refused to allow inspectors in?
And libs think this proves he had no other plans????

I dunno. The terms "fox" and "henhouse" certainly come to mind...

JB

From yesterdays Washington Times:
US removes uranium from Iraq

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program _ a huge [550 tons] stockpile of [yellowcake] concentrated natural uranium _ reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

Re the chemical WMD's that supposedly weren't there: I work for a U.S. Army Lab and we do a lot of work countering IED's. Lately it's turned out that the terrorists are using chemical shells (see Fox News). Fortunately, they don't know how do detonate them properly. U.S. forces have found over 500 shells in the last 5 years, and this is just the sweep-up from Sadam's arsenal. The question isn't if he had WMD's, but where they went to.

Once again the lefties have proven that they strain at gnats and swallow camels. If we found a hundred A-bombs, fused and loaded on planes ready to be used, they would find some way to claim they wern't really weapons of mass destruction.

This post is so riddled with errors and misrepresentations it's tough to know where to start. This yellowcake stockpile was acquired in the 1970s and early 1980s, and has been public knowledge since before the first Gulf War. In fact, the IAEA chose not to remove it from Iraq after the first war because it doesn't pose a direct proliferation threat. YOU CAN'T MAKE A NUCLEAR BOMB WITH YELLOWCAKE, OK? you need to enrich it, like Iran is now doing. Otherwise, it's just a huge pile of yellow sand.

This stockpile was known not only to the Bush I & II and Clinton administrations, but to US and foreign intelligence agencies, the IAEA, etc etc. It doesn't confirm ANYTHING about WMD.

In fact, even when Saddam was not permitting UN inspectors to roam Iraq searching for WMD, he *DID* allow the IAEA to come in and inspect this very stockpile of yellowcake.

Do a basic fact check next time please.

"How many nuclear weapons can you build [with 500 tons of yellowcake]? The answer is 142."

No, the correct answer is ZERO. I hope that terrorists with no more knowlege of nuclear weapons than this blog waste their time and resources trying to build a nuclear bomb with yellowcake.

Once again the lifties prove that they strain at gnats and swallow camels. If we were to find that Sadam had a hundred A-bombs, fused, armed, loaded on missles, and ready to fire, the Bush haters would find a way to claim that they were not really weapons of mass destruction.

Convoys of trucks into Syria from Iraq? Israel bombing suspected Syrian nuclear facilities recently? Is there a connection?

Yellowcake can be refined into your basic uranium with low tech means. For every atom of U-235 there are about 1,000 atoms of U-238. U-238 will not support a chain reaction. U-235 will if it's at least 90% pure. You can use centrifuges or accelerators to separate the U-235 from the U-238 but this is a pain. If you have a nuclear reactor all you have to do is line your reactor vessel with the U-238 and it transmutes into U-239 (Plutonium) which is great for bomb making. This is why Iran and North Korea want reactors. Saddam had money and yellowcake...if Bush had not invaded the international embargo would have caved by now and Saddam would have had Pakistan or North Korea or Venezuela or one of the old Soviet republics refine the stuff for him. It would have happened and that is a fact.

There were 500 tons+ - of yellowcake,2.5 tons of 3% "ENRICHED" enriched uranium, and 300 tons of medical radiation ie cesium. I will not say how to do it, because it gives idiots ideas, but Google "Goiania" and "Tuwaitha". (Look for source documents at the IAEA site.)I wish the NY times would. This material was guarded by Saddam. The money and power behind 911 could have used these. George Bush's learning curve went up on the morning of 911, when will the haus frau leaders' of the house go up? Saddam was in violation for years. His oil deals with "old Europe".Add to all this, the fact that HRH Hans Blix missed thousands of gallons of botulinum, sarin, ricin, etc. that are "STILL NOT ACCOUNTED FOR".We found them after Hussein Kammal defected to Jordan and helped UNSCOM.Don't even mention the weapons grade material on pg 18 on the link above. Kucinich amazes me how he would trust Saddam but want to impeach George Bush. What I dread most is that the terrorist have struck in the first year of a presidential election.1993,2001 The next one, would be next year. God forbid myopic "Al Qaeda" obsessed Obama gets in with his public school worldview. Clew: Mujah Hadeen is like a net and has infiltrated every country in the world for decades. (citation:Ollie North: cocktail party, Easton PA, State theater,2nd fl. 1996-1997)I would consider Sean and Rush "Great Americans" if they would connect all this and communicate it. A question for Senator Obama, "What bridges would he blow to isolate a chemical or radiation attack?" I work in lower Manhattan almost every day, I hope his learning curve goes up before the election.

And to think after all this time and all the WMD inspectors, the GOP has found a way to "snaek" their WMD's into Iraq..LOL POOR GEORGE..still the worst selected pres ever..

OK. So the anti-Bush crowd has an excuse for every blunder they make. The latest is "old uranium doesn't count". Funny thing is, when those aluminum enrichment tubes were unearthed a few years ago the same folks said, "enrichment equipment means nothing without the yellowcake!" When we discovered the sarin and mustard gas stockpiles the excuse was , again, "That was old mustard gas artillery shells." To the reality denying Democrat, "old" weapons of mass destruction don't count because they are old. Perhaps we should inform those 30,000 Kurds that Saddam gassed with the stuff that they really are not dead because that mustard gas was "old."

big deal....and do you think for one second that saddam hussein would actually build a nuclear weapon when he knew that ISRAEL has over 200 nuclear warheads in its' arsenal??? no way!!saddam was a tin-pot dictator but he was'nt stupid...besides he had that yellowcake pre 1991...

Huge news.

WMD found in Iraq and safely removed.

President Bush vindicated.

Lets see if the democrats line up and apologize.

Rick - Your government spent a billion dollars looking for the enrichment equipment that you talk of. Surprising that you found it & they didn't.

There are no remnants of any post-1991 WMD program that has been offered as proof by the US government. I will be happy to retract my statement & admit my mistake when there is proof as agreed by IAEA that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons.

BTW., did you know that Donald Rumsfield had tea & biscuit with Saddam on the day when they gassed the Iranians(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Iraq_War#Chemical_weapons). OK, i don't know what Rumsfeld drank with Saddam, but the US government was hand in glove with Saddam till he decided to invade Kuwait.

And it will be interesting for you to know - According to retired Colonel Walter Lang, senior defense intelligence officer for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his aides, because they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." The Reagan administration did not stop aiding Iraq after receiving reports of the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians.

Rick - Your government spent a billion dollars looking for the enrichment equipment that you talk of. Surprising that you found it & they didn't.

There are no remnants of any post-1991 WMD program that has been offered as proof by the US government. I will be happy to retract my statement & admit my mistake when there is proof as agreed by IAEA that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons.

BTW., did you know that Donald Rumsfield had tea & biscuit with Saddam on the day when they gassed the Iranians(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Iraq_War#Chemical_weapons). OK, i don't know what Rumsfeld drank with Saddam, but the US government was hand in glove with Saddam till he decided to invade Kuwait.

And it will be interesting for you to know - According to retired Colonel Walter Lang, senior defense intelligence officer for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his aides, because they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." The Reagan administration did not stop aiding Iraq after receiving reports of the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians.

I am a retired Army nuclear physicist and was a member of the team that secured and inventoried all of the nuclear material in Iraq. So please allow me to add some insight to the information provided in the article, as it seems everyone here is misusing the information to support their particular political view - either far left or far right.

The facts are as follows: The uranium in Iraq did date back to before the 1991 Gulf War. At that time the UN inventoried the material and placed it under seal so that it could be inspected annually to ensure that it was not secretly diverted to a weapons program. However, it is important to note that these seals were nothing more than a piece of wire with a lead seal on it. A 99 cent pair of wire cutters is all it would take to get to the stuff. Once Saddam decided to enrich the material, he would have a year to complete the task before the next scheduled inventory. So the term IAEA "safeguards" is a misnomer. The material was not guarded by anyone other than the Iraqi Army. It was not safe at all. The UN should have forced Iraq to get rid of it as part of the cease fire agreement.

It is true that yellowcake cannot be used to make a nuclear weapon until it is enriched through one of several processes. Enrichment technology really was the key issue - did Iraq have it? Or more accurately, did Iraq still have it or were they just hiding it. After 1991, when Iraq agreed to abandon all of its nuclear programs, the IAEA inspectors caught the Iraqis red-handed trying to hide their enrichment technology. Iraq had developed electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) technology prior to the Gulf War and was within a year or two of being able to enrich their yellowcake. Had Iraq not invaded Kuwait, we would not have discovered this fact and Iraq would be a nuclear power today. For several years, Iraq hid this enrichment technology from the UN inspectors by moving the EMIS technology around on large trucks. Satellite imagery finally led inspectors to the EMIS equipment, but only after they deviated from the inspection plan approved by Iraq. Later, the Iraqis were caught with centrifuge technology after denying they had it. The point is that even though the yellowcake was pre-1991, it was a threat as long as it remained in Iraq. The IAEA failed to take the right action which was to force the Iraqis to get rid of it. Iraq did not have a nuclear power program, so the only reason for them to keep the uranium was for a future weapons program.

While the dems have correctly pointed out that Iraq did not have enrichment equipment at the time of the war, they refuse to acknowledge that we could not know that. Without open cooperation, the inspectors could not verify whether enrichment technology remained or whether they had developed other means. South Africa had successfully enriched uranium for their weapons program using a new hard to detect technology. How could we ensure that Iraq did not do the same? We could not.

The location and quantity of yellowcake was indeed known before the invasion. The site was left unguarded for nearly three weeks when the invasion began. Contrary to the claim of an earlier poster, the looting took place before the arrival of US troops, not afterwards. The Iraqi guards fled Tuwaitha the day the war started, March 19, and U.S. forces did not arrive until early April. Looters had indeed dumped much of the uranium in on the floor in order to steal the plastic barrels. My team worked with a team from the IAEA to shovel the material back into barrels. We then weighed the uranium to make sure that it was all accounted for. My team worked in full protective suits and respirators for up to 14 hours per day in 130 degree temperatures. Some of us lost over 20 pounds in two weeks. After finishing that job, we traveled all over Iraq to secure other nuclear and radiological material and bring it back to Tuwaitha. It was a military operation unlike any in history.

Contrary to the American Thinker article above, all of this was reported in the MSM as it occurred in 2003. We had AP press on the roof tops around the Tuwaitha complex filming our every move. CNN ran video of my team going into and coming out of the site. These stories drew little attention because at the time everyone was looking for the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. We knew that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapon, so the priority focused on the things that could hurt America first - weaponized material.

In the end, neither the left nor the right were correct. Iraq did not have stockpiles of WMD as most of America thought. But neither was Iraq innocent as many liberals claim. Saddam Hussein kept the yellowcake in Iraq for one purpose - to restart his weapons program when the UN sanctions were lifted. As it turns out, Iraq did not have a means of enriching the uranium and was not an imminent threat. But the fact that is lost on most anti-war folks is that the only way we could know that is for Saddam to give us total access to inspect anywhere we wanted or we had to find out by force.

I like to use this analogy to explain the war: Let's say you parole a murderer and forbid him from owning a gun as a condition of his parole. You later discover evidence that he has purchased ammo and a gun cleaning kit. So you ask to search his house. He says no, so you get a warrant and search the house by force. If you do not find a gun, does that mean your warrant was baseless and the search illegal? No. It was justified under the circumstances. Same thing goes for Iraq. Not finding WMD does not mean that the search was unjustified. He had the basic ingredients for WMD and the know-how to make them. Without Saddam letting us verify Iraq's compliance with the cease fire agreement, there was no way to be certain that he was abiding by the rules short of using force. Twelve years of sanctions sure didn't work.

Now, the reason that the Bush administration did not push the yellowcake fact is simple. They had hung their hats on the intelligence reports that said Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. They shot themselves in the foot by making the war about weapons rather than sticking to the real issue which was compliance with the UN cease fire agreement and subsequent resolutions. That was enough justification for the war. But once Bush sent Powell to the UN with the intel reports, they shifted the attention to WMD rather than noncompliance. So anything short of a WMD stockpile seemed like failure.

The bottom line is this - this is not Bush's war, it is Saddam's war. He was the only person in a position to stop it. He chose poorly.

interesting this is but irrelevant in the whole. bush1 knew clinton knew bush2 knew everybody knew about the yellowcake so what. wmds so what. the real crim of saddam was an ecologial crime, the rape and destruction of iraq's marshes. an ecological crime that far surpassed any wmd crimes that he did. clinton knew about this and did NOTHING other than continue the war at a low level during his whole term even as millions of fish and animals and birds and plants died horrible deaths deaths that contributed directly to global warming. it took bush2 to get in there and take the steps necessary to finally bring this 12 year now 17 plus year war to an end and give the poor raped flora and fauna of those marshes and wetlands a chance to live again. wmd no wmd y'all argue and argue and don't care a bit for the environment. shame on you. who cares if there were wmd or not. one of the great wetlands of the planet was saved because bush had the courage to do what clinton and the so called libs did noot.
it was not a war for oil or wmds it was a war for wetlands. btw bush's crawford ranch is energy efficient unlike ecoswine gore's palace.

Why can't we get this info to Bill Oreilly?

Nukeman-fascinating, compelling, really thank you, that's a contribution of the first order. Now Terri, way up the line adds some tantalizing info, too, about Libya. But buried underneath all of the smoking guns is our good buddy Khan and his band of merry thieves and lunatics.

What seems clear to me is that Bush and crew are incompetent, simply not up to the job; I am not saying anyone else would handle this one way or another but his choices were bad. His explanations illogical and his players Keystone cops.

The info and intelligence were there Nukeman, it had to be. This was a classic a rope-a-dope exercise. We knew he had the yellowcake, that it was a symbolic, shrewd bluff (sounds scary but Sadaam knew that we knew his every move) that his game was bluff, and that the way to gain the upper hand in the Middle East was to run with his story. But what was the real story and told to whom?

We had to have had the intelligence-come on, from what you know you must admit that its a real head scratcher-the goods gone to Syria? and other fairy tales. Hey, each one sounds like a good, sinister the dog ate my homework story.

No; something, someone(s) wanted this deal to go down and this President in president's clothing got taken in--that's the real story. That's the book in 20 years story. How else do we explain this?

Sadaam was a bad guy as most of them are over there-they are "thick as thieves" and while I am absolutely flabbergasted at Bush and crew at their mindnumbing missteps here and abroad I believe he means well-whatever that means.

There was an opportunity though that doesn't come around often...

Even though he had the yellow cake material, he could not manufacture nuclear bombs because the nuclear complex at Tuwaitha was destroyed long before we went to war in Iraq.