Posted on 10/27/2005 11:17:43 AM PDT by HangnJudge
The sign out front said "Saddam Hussein's Nuclear Mastermind." Inside, Mahdi Obeidi, former head of Iraq's centrifuge program for uranium enrichment, told more than 200 people, including Department of Energy employees, that he wants to help stop one of humanity's greatest nightmares - global weapons of mass destruction.
"We cannot afford one mistake," Obeidi said. "Everybody should be concerned."
Obeidi, who emigrated to the United States in 2003, spoke on Wednesday morning at the Pollard Auditorium at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. His visit was sponsored by the Oak Ridge Office of Counterintelligence and funded by the U.S. State Department, according to OCI Director Mike Rochford.
Obeidi, who has studied at the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Swansea in Wales, said Iraq was "on the verge" of developing an atomic bomb at the time of the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s. He said Iraq had almost developed the weapon in just three years using technology and materials from countries around the world, including the United States.
The Gulf War, which followed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, interrupted the nuclear weapons program. Around the end of the war, Obeidi said, he took uranium enrichment centrifuge blueprints and components to his home, where he hid them from the international inspectors that followed the end of the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at oakridger.com ...
I hope that everyone is listening.
"Iraqi scientist urges nuclear caution"
When I first read the headline I read it as "Iraqi scientist urges nuclear option," and while I agreed with him I wondered why he would even have an opinion on the subject.
Those of us who live in Oak Ridge do pay attention
A lot of it.....
The U.S. declassified the centrifuge techniques around 1956, because they thought no one would ever use that method again. They were wrong.
thats the very reason why Iran should not be allowed to be nuclear armed
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