Posted on 11/12/2005 7:48:27 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
Though President Bush didn't mention it in his speech yesterday rebutting critics of his administration's use of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, experts say that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled enough partially enriched uranium to produce at least one full-fledged nuclear bomb.
Commenting on Saddam's enriched uranium stash after the U.S. Energy Department removed it to Oak Ridge, Tenn., in June 2004, top physicist Ivan Oelrich told the Associated Press:
"[Saddam's] 1.95 tons of low-enriched uranium could be used to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb."
Oelrich, a leading member of the Federation of American Scientists, is not alone in that assessment.
Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, told the New York Times that Saddam's partially enriched uranium "could have been further enriched to make it useful in a weapon."
After the U.S. removed Saddam's nuke fuel stockpile, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi confirmed that it posed a great danger to the region's security interests.
"These materials, which are potential weapons of mass murder, are not welcome in our country and their production is unacceptable," Allawi told Agence France Press.
Even Saddam's 500-ton un-enriched uranium stockpile, which he stored at the same nuclear weapons research facility where inspectors found his partially enriched stash, posed a potential threat.
In a March 2003 op-ed piece for London's Evening Standard, Norman Dombey, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sussex, calculated that Saddam's yellowcake could have yielded a staggering nuclear arsenal.
"You have a warehouse containing 500 tons of natural uranium," Dombey wrote. "You need 25 kilograms of U235 to build one weapon. How many nuclear weapons can you build?
"The answer is 142 [nuclear bombs]," he said.
An American city annihilated?
It can`t be so the RATS said their are no WMD`s must be a mistake.
The IAEA knew of Saddam's uranium. The problem here isn't that he had it...it's that the inspections weren't allowed to confirm it wasn't being put into use!
Expect the Legacy Media to focus on the "1" number,
and not the "142" number.
Also expect them to deprecate the "1" number with
arguments like: "Well, that was no threat. He wouldn't
even have been able to test it." Testing is not needed.
Keep in mind that the US did not test its Uranium gun-type
bomb either. The Hiroshima device was tested on Hiroshima.
They are that simple. What we tested at Trinity was the
Plutonium implosion-type device later used on Nagasaki.
Wait Saddam had no WMD's....Someone is lying here, there needs to be an investigation into this cooked intelligence.
was the IAEA aware of the two tons of
partly enriched uranium?
There was. And that was cooked, too :)
Kudos to NewsMax for breaking this story.
Are there any links to other news sources picking up on this story?
Yes... and then the response would be......."Oops, my bad"..."Well...we just didn't have enough info because Bush (fill-in-the-blank)"
President Bush made a terrible error in focusing on the WMD the way he did, and not on the simple fact that Saddam was ignoring resolutions and the cease-fire agreement.
Production of the HIGHLY enriched uranium is the most difficult part.
The relation of low-enriched uranium to a nuclear bomb is the same as the relationship between a block of steel and a machinegun.
The relationship of raw uranium ore to a nuclear weapon is the same as a pile of iron ore to a machinegun.
The only danger of low-enriched uranium is if someone drops a drum of it out of a window on to your head.
It's not just the RATS who say Saddam had no WMD.
It's also the Bush administration.
They've let us down.
They decided to surrender on that question a long time ago.
It's too late for them to make the case now.
It doesn't matter if Saddam had WMD or not, everyone, including George W. Bush agrees he didn't.
It would take more than one.
There would have to be enough large city RATnests annihilated to reduce the commieRAT base to the point Pro-Americans would be in the majority.
> President Bush made a terrible error in ...
... not asking for Tenet's resignation on 2001-01-21.
It was George "slam dunk" Tenet who assured Bush
that Iraq had WMDs. I am still undecided on whether
that was sabotage or merely massive incompetence on
Tenet's part.
> ... focusing on the WMD the way he did, and not on
> the simple fact that Saddam was ignoring resolutions
> and the cease-fire agreement.
I've never been bothered by the focus, claims or outcome.
The disloyal opposition in this country decided that they
heard something Bush didn't say, and have been whining
ever since that their misunderstanding must have been a
Bush lie.
And they never ever bring up the Lybian WMD program
we got for "free" after taking down Iraq.
The above is somewhat misleading as it wasn't "Found", both stashes were known and declared to the IAEA, under IAEA seal, visited by inspectors (right up to right before GW II) and posession of them was not a violation of any UN sanctions.
Not that anyone really cares about the above as it's easily avaliable information but basically ignored by FR.
Libs are calling for rounds and rounds of investigations for one reason....throwing up chaff...to avoid the light being shone on their own behavior. They have the media and their calls are amplified, giving them power.
But the Republicans have the power of chairmanship, and set the agenda.
Therefore, the Republicans should ignore the shrill cries and use their power to investigate the treasonous lies propagated against this country's war effort, complaints of the left be damned...
And therein lies the problem. Always has been, still is.
What do you want to bet we hear nothing else like yesterdays speech again?
"was the IAEA aware of the two tons of
partly enriched uranium?"
Yes, this was the stuff that was documented and sealed by the IAEA after 1991. Hence the fact that its existence wasn't being used as justification for another war. Not really sure why we have a spate of articles now bringing it up like it was some kind of startling discovery.
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