Lando 
Posted on 08/10/2004 8:01:03 PM PDT by Lando Lincoln
Professor Norman Dombey, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sussex, England, has confirmed that Saddam Hussein had more than enough yellowcake uranium to make over 100 nuclear weapons. There was no conceivable peaceful use for this material in Iraq. The United Nations agency responsible for monitoring Iraq's nuclear efforts turned a blind eye to this stockpile.
On July 15th, American Thinker readers were alerted to the real story behind the initial shipment of low-enriched uranium out of Saddam’s al-Tuwaitha nuclear research site. This shipment of two tons was only a drop in the bucket compared to the 500 tons of yellowcake still stored at Site C in the complex.
In an op-ed piece in The Evening Standard, Professor Dombey stated that
Iraq already had far more uranium than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme.
Not only that, but 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.
Professor Dombey also does the math in calculating the weapons potential for this huge amount of nuclear material
You have a warehouse containing 500 tons of natural uranium; you need 25 kilograms of U235 to build one weapon. How many nuclear weapons can you build? The answer is 142.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has been deliberately deceptive in their “monitoring” of the al-Tuwaitha site, while they assured the West that the material was under seal and would not be tampered with. It is now clear that the IAEA is, in fact, impotent in their lame attempts to ensure rogue nations adhere to the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The article goes on to say
…the IAEA was also in charge of monitoring North Korea's nuclear program right up until 2002, when Pyongyang announced it would begin producing nuclear weapons.
It boggles the mind that some politicians in this country salivate over the concept of turning our national security over to the UN, when it is clear that the organization turns a blind eye to a vicious dictator intent on developing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
Douglas Hanson
Lando
we are still waiting for the tests to link it to Libya's program.
ping to read later.
isn't it strange that although there was no WMD found there that our local news reports have run multiple stories about nuclear materials from Iraq. why is this not being reported nationally?
http://theoakridger.com/stories/070704/new_20040707014.shtml
Saddam sent a hand full of his top Military people on a trade mission to Niger in 1999, there is no doubt that he wanted to purchase Yellow Cake from Niger, because they have nothing else of worth to offer Saddam. The Senate Intel Committee has concurred this as fact. The 9/11 Commission has concurred this as fact, and so has Lord Butlers Intel Investigation concurred this as fact.
So not only has George W. Bush's 16 words in his SOTU speech been vindicated, but its clear that Saddam Hussein wasn't trying to buy yellow cake for peaceful purposes. The fact is that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking to restart his Nuclear program
500 tons? wholey crap!
Is the yellowcake still in place?
Part of the problem is that most journalist are just plain stupid. I seriously think they would have a hard time spelling WMD if you spotted them the W and the M
I wonder if we could drop Bill O'Reilly in a pile of this stuff?
BTTT
Okay, but most of that was KNOWN by the IAEA before the war, right???
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com/
aaaah, now I see the angle .... hmmmm
ping
An excellent description.
For the same reason they don't run the stories about the sarin gas ammunintion rounds or the mustard gas in the Euphrates or any of the other WMD that have actually been found...
I know that I'm late in this thread but this relates to the discussion. I found this collection of articles about WMDs going to Syria and an attempted bombing in Jordan: http://cshink.com/wmd_article_archive.htm .
Summary: Satellite photography showed large truck convoys entering Syria from Iraq prior to the US invasion. In April 2004, confessed Al Qaeda members were caught crossing into Jordan from Syria with 20 TONS of chemical weapons, including vx and sarin, with a plan that would have killed 20,000 people.
I remember seeing this story about the chemical weapons on Fox News once or twice, but they never mentioned what type of chemicals were found.
This is a much better explaination of what happened to Saddam's WMD stockpiles, as opposed to accepting that the intellegence agencies of every industrialized country in the world were all wrong.
On 08/10/2004 you posted a comment on an article
I had written in The Evening Standard. You said that
I had written that “Iraq already had far more uranium
than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme.
Not only that, but 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.”
Professor Dombey also does the math in calculating the weapons potential for this huge amount of nuclear material
[You have a warehouse containing 500 tons of natural uranium; you need 25 kilograms of U235 to build one weapon. How many nuclear weapons can you build? The answer is 142.]
“The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has been deliberately deceptive in their “monitoring” of the al-Tuwaitha site, while they assured the West that the material was under seal and would not be tampered with. It is now clear that the IAEA is, in fact, impotent in their lame attempts to ensure rogue nations adhere to the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The article goes on to say
…the IAEA was also in charge of monitoring North Korea's nuclear program right up until 2002, when Pyongyang announced it would begin producing nuclear weapons”
I did not write what you quoted except for the small section in square brackets which calculated the number
of nuclear weapons that a state with enrichment facilities
could have built given 500 tons of natural uranium. Iraq
had no such facilities in 2002. The point of my article
was to show that the story that Iraq had wished to buy
500 tons of uranium from Niger was nonsense, since Iraq already had 500 tons of uranium.
The article is reproduced below:
Simple Maths that reveals the red herring of Niger
By Professor Norman Dombey
Water supplies were scarce in
Iraq just after the war. So people
looked around for barrels to
hold water. At a village 30 miles
southeast of Baghdad they broke
into one of Saddam’s military
installations and found hundreds
of barrels containing a sort of
yellowish earth. They emptied
this and filled the barrels with
water.
The military site was Iraq’s main
nuclear research station at
Tuwaitha. The yellowish earth
was yellowcake -- natural
uranium ore. There were 500
tons of it.
The US and Britain knew
perfectly well that 500 tons of
natural uranium was held at
Tuwaitha because the site was
inspected every six months by
the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) to see if it was
safe. Which it was, until the US
forces arrived and let the looters
in.
But if you want to make nuclear
weapons, you need much more
than uranium ore. Natural
uranium consists mainly (99.3%)
of uranium 238 or U238 whic is
radioactive but is not used in
normal nuclear weapons since it
cannot sustain a chain-reaction.
For that you need U235 which
only makes up 0.7% of natural
uranium.
So here is a GCSE (tenth grade)
maths question: you have a
warehouse containing 500 tons of
natural uranium, you need 25 kg
of U235 to build one weapon.
How many nuclear weapons can
you build?
The answer is 142. So why on
earth should Iraq need to buy
more uranium from Niger as the
Downing St dossier claimed last
September? Iraq already had far
more uranium than it needed for
any conceivable nuclear weapon
programme.Yesterday in
Parliament Tony Blair
reiterated that he stood by the
Niger story. And he told
Parliament earlier this year that
"if he [Saddam] were able to
purchase fissile material legally,
it would only be a year or two"
before Iraq possessed a nuclear
weapon.
That is true. It is also true of
most developed countries in the
world. All the EU countries
(except possibly Luxembourg);
all the major Arab countries; all
the large South American
countries could all build a
nuclear weapon within a year or
two if they were given enough of
the fissile material U235. Even
Imperial College could probably
build a bomb in two months
given enough U235.
Nuclear weapons are difficult
and expensive to build not
because uranium is scarce but
because it is very difficult and
expensive to enrich U235 from
0.7% to the 90% 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 that Iraq
had a functioning enrichment
plant which 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. In a review of the
dossier I wrote "The assessment
also says that 'Iraq has sought
the supply of significant
quantities of uranium from
Africa'. Maybe it has but so
what? The IAEA confirmed to
me that Iraq already has
hundreds of tons of uranium at
its disposal. Without enrichment
facilities this material is useless
for nuclear weapons......
"It is also very possible that this
African story is an intelligence
sting: those with long memories
can remember the capacitors
destined for Iraq found at
Heathrow in 1990 which turned
out to be an FBI sting". The
capacitors were supposed to be
nuclear triggers.
The IAEA demonstrated that
documents given to it about the
supposed Niger-Iraq connection
were forged. So who forged
them?
Whoever it was wanted to make
the case for war knowing that the
public did not know the
difference between U235 and
U238. For once it was not the
CIA, because the CIA sent an
ambassador to Niger to check
the story.
That leaves two serious
contenders: MI6 and the Israeli
intelligence service Mossad.
Take your pick. Neither is going
to tell you.
I now understand the fishy smell
last September. It was a gigantic
red herring.
Norman Dombey is Professor of
Theoretical Physics at the
University of Sussex. He is an
advisor to the Liberal Democrats
on nuclear proliferation.
Evening Standard Thursday 17 July 2003
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