Posted on 11/15/2005 5:55:30 AM PST by conservativecorner
Bush officials have done such a poor job defending themselves against charges they lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that even their supporters seem to have forgotten about some of the most compelling WMD evidence.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, for instance, keeps apologizing for his speech to the United Nations on the eve of the Iraq war. But at least one chilling bit of evidence he introduced there has never been refuted.
Here's how Powell introduced his case on Feb. 5, 2003:
POWELL: Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you're about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored. It takes place on November 26 [2002], on the day before United Nations teams resumed inspections in Iraq.
Story Continues Below
The conversation involves two senior officers, a colonel and a brigadier general, from Iraq's elite military unit, the Republican Guard. TAPE TRANSCRIPT:
IRAQI COLONEL : About this committee that is coming with [U.N. nuclear weapons inspector] Mohamed ElBaradei.
IRAQI GENERAL : Yeah, yeah.
COL: We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?
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GEN: You didn't get a modified... You don't have a modified... COL: By God, I have one.
GEN: Which? From the workshop...?
COL: From the al-Kindi Company
GEN: Yeah, yeah. I'll come to you in the morning. I have some comments. I'm worried you all have something left.
COL: We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left. [END OF POWELL TAPE EXCERPT]
What type of "modified vehicle" do Iraq war critics think Saddam's general was worried about? A souped-up 1967 Mustang?
And what, pray tell, do they think Saddam's colonel was referring to when he said, "We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left"?
My point is not about the barrels, of which I could really care less. The point was that Greenpeace was in Iraq during the first days of the police action, 'running around' as you say. And of course this
The canister -- the size of a small car -- contained significant quantities of radioactive yellowcake and had been left open and unattended for more than 20 days on a busy section of open ground near the Tuwaitha plant
The administration official can't very well talk about an official inventory and make wild claims of more material than originally thought if the stuff is just laying around out in the open can they?
Common Dreams and Greenpeace are a bunch of leftist scums and I would trust the US military anyday over anything these people or this leftist rag says. Are you a liberal leftist? If so, what are you doing here?
Let me spell this out for you. The Common Dreams article states repeatedly that these things were looted "FOLLOWING THE FALL OF SADDAM"..HOWEVER..Saddam(Baghdad) fell on the 5th of April..our soldiers secured the site on the 7th and local villagers stated that the site was looted the week before when the Iraqi soldiers fled the site. At that time, our troops were just entering Iraq!
So, Greenpeacec and Common Dreams, just like the rest of the LSM, are not being truthful. The site was looted during the initial stages of the war, not after the fall of Baghdad.
Oh ... just a guess on my part
UN Confirms: WMDs Smuggled Out of Iraq
The Vanguard ^ | June 18, 2004 | Rod D. Martin
Correction to my post. Baghdad fell on APRIL 9, 2003. Our troops were on the ground at Tuwaitha on April 7, 2003. So the Greenpeace and LSM media claim that the site was looted AFTER the fall of Baghdad is a BALD FACE LIE!!
The Weekly Standard and National Review are well respected, even by liberals, as conservative news publications. Your slight regarding them shows your complete ignorance of any of the facts regarding WMD, and more importantly, life in general.
Here are a couple of issues for you:
The UN, Al-Tuwaitha, and Nukes
By Douglas Hanson
The American Thinker | July 20, 2004
The UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was very upset last week that the US had shipped about 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium and other radioactive material out of Iraq for disposition in the US. One would think that the IAEA would have appreciated our work in assisting them in the implementation of the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in this particularly volatile region of the world. But one would be wrong.
The actions, or more appropriately, the inactions of the IAEA regarding Iraq since the end of Gulf War I, betray the agency’s true agenda. Rather than inspect, report, and implement restrictions in accordance with the provisions in the treaty, the agency has in effect become an enabler of rogue nations who are attempting, or who have already succeeded in developing or acquiring special nuclear material and equipment. In other words, the IAEA is simply a reflection of its parent organization, which routinely delays and obfuscates the efforts of the US and the UK in controlling banned substances and delivery systems.
Time after time, the agency has either intentionally or naively bought into the lies and deceptions contrived by nations of the Axis of Evil during IAEA visits and inspections. In most cases, the IAEA avoids confrontation like the plague in order to maintain access to the facilities. If they are booted out, as was the case with North Korea, their impotence is on display for all to see. In other cases, the agency joins in the deception, thereby allowing these rogue states to level the nuclear playing field with the West and Russia. Their reaction to the shipment of nuclear material out of Saddam’s nuclear research center at Al-Tuwaitha is a perfect example of this tactic.
The nuclear research center of Al-Tuwaitha is a 23,000 acre site located about 20 kilometers south-southeast of Baghdad. Most reports of the transfer of the low-enriched uranium out of the country correctly refer to the source location of the uranium as at Tuwaitha Site C. But there is much more material stored at this huge site, and there are more facilities at Tuwaitha that have contributed significantly to the overall capabilities of the research center. These key facilities are, of course, generally ignored in major press reports.
Site C is a relatively small site as compared to the rest of the reservation, but the amount of material stored there is not insignificant. In addition to the nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium secured by the US, Site C was home to an additional 500 tons of yellowcake uranium,* This is a conservative estimate as initially reported by Coalition personnel from the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Ironically, this initial figure is backed up by, of all organizations, Greenpeace.
Yellowcake is uranium ore that has been milled to produce a pure form of the substance known as Uranium Oxide. Further processes, such as conversion and enrichment, are required to make the yellowcake suitable for use as nuclear fuel in a reactor or for use in a nuclear weapon. Interestingly, a quantity of depleted uranium was also found at Tuwaitha. This implies that some enrichment processes occurred on-site, as depleted uranium is the natural byproduct of the enrichment process.
In addition to the yellowcake, approximately 300 tons of radioisotopes for industrial and medical uses were stored at primarily Site B. These materials, numbering over 1000 radioactive items retrieved from the site, included Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60. Both are extremely radioactive substances that are ideal for use in Radiological Dispersal Devices (RDD), or “dirty bombs.”
There are also three key facilities on the Al-Tuwaitha reservation that are rarely mentioned in media accounts of the transfer. First, there is the French reactor at Site B, better known as Osirak, which was destroyed by the Israelis in 1981 in Operation Opera. The second facility is the Russian built reactor at Site A, destroyed by the US in Gulf War I in 1991. The third facility is a fuel fabrication plant at Site D, also destroyed in 1991. All three facilities have never been rebuilt. All spent fuel or fresh fuel was sent back to the country of origin after Gulf War I.
Now, the IAEA complains that the Department of Energy (DOE) shipped the radioactive materials to the US without UN permission. The agency’s rationale is that there was
some concern about the legality of the U.S. transfer because the nuclear material belonged to Iraq and was under the control and supervision of the IAEA.
The material at Tuwaitha is also characterized as being “under IAEA seal and control.” The article states that only two tons of yellowcake remained at Al-Tuwaitha after Gulf War I. This is simply incorrect, according to my own sources. Either the AP, the IAEA, or both, are misrepresenting the facts.
All of this begs the question: why did the IAEA allow Iraq to retain such massive amounts of nuclear material, when its three nuclear facilities had been destroyed over 12 years ago, and have never been repaired? In fact, the Russian reactor is so hot, it would take years to clean up the facility; it’s a total write off. Iraq had no legitimate reason to have possessed the yellowcake.
And speaking of the storage and accountability of the radioactive material, who maintained those seals, anyway? Let’s see the paperwork.
And why didn’t the UN ship the yellowcake and the low-enriched uranium out of the country 12 years ago? Wouldn’t the UN be interested in denying Saddam the nuclear raw materials, in case he decided to conduct enrichment by calutron at facilities such as Tarmiya and al-Fajar?
It appears the IAEA is not really interested in non-proliferation at all; otherwise this material would have long ago been safeguarded in another country. Thankfully, this overdue evacuation of a dangerous stockpile has finally been started by the DOE, even if much more remains to be done.
Department of Energy officials estimated that the two tons of low-enriched uranium shipped to the US, given further refinement, is enough to produce one nuclear bomb. The number of bombs that could be made from the over 500 tons of yellowcake is frightening, and, had the coalition not attacked Iraq, Saddam’s nuclear bomb stockpile may have become reality. The IAEA would have us believe that the massive amount of yellowcake on-site and the depleted uranium find were just due to the Iraqis pursuing enrichment techniques in order to provide fuel for two destroyed reactors. This is what the UN views as nuclear research for “peaceful purposes.” Simply put, Saddam had retained a nuclear weapons regeneration capability in the same way he did for biological and chemical weapons production.
The IAEA chief, Mohamed El-Baradei is distraught at the secretive nature of the US transfer of nuclear materials out of Iraq. He also continues to opine about the US confronting Tehran about its 18 year effort to conceal its nuclear weapon activities. Most analysts say the mullahs will produce a bomb in short order. El-Baradei said that he didn’t want to take the Iran issue before the UN Security Council because
You are running the risk that the Security Council might not act and therefore the situation would exacerbate. And you run the risk that Iran might opt out of the NPT (nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and you have another North Korea.
In other words, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog agency doesn’t want to notify the member nations of the UN Security Council of the Iranian breach of treaty provisions, because the council might then institute economic sanctions, and then Iran might opt out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and then expel UN inspectors, and then some big US city is blown to smithereens -- well, you get the idea.
The UN and its so-called nuclear watchdog agency have proven again that they are not about preventing the proliferation of WMD, but in reality, unwittingly or intentionally, assist rogue nations’ nuclear weapons programs. Their track record over the last decade includes abject failure in North Korea, allowing a sadistic dictator to keep nuclear materials to fuel non-operational reactors, and now they are afraid to truthfully report the critical situation in Iran to the Security Council.
Keep in mind that John Kerry wants to entrust our national security to these same people.
All I have to say is, thank God for the Coalition and George W. Bush.
Good article!
No, they're well respected by Republicans. Liberals respect them as half the staff are big government hacks not far off from the Democrats on most domestic issues. Consider who is the editor. The son of the man who called himself the "Godfather of Neocons". The American Conservative tends to lean more conservative than either of those two rags, although Buchanan has some issues himself
Now we're arguing semantics. I imagine that's what you have to do when you don't really have an argument. I don't give a crap about Greenpeace or Common Dreams or timelines about who showed up when. Much the same way I feel about the Weekly Standard and the National Review. My point is that the government official is doing nothing but making wild guesses that can't (and haven't) be backed up considering that the yellowcake had been inventoried by 2002.
"My point is that the government official is doing nothing but making wild guesses that can't (and haven't) be backed up considering that the yellowcake had been inventoried by 2002."
Isn't it funny that your argument can not be backed up by anything but assumptions. When the United States finally went into Iraq, Saddam had been defying the UN resolutions for YEARS! The IAEA & Unmovic had repeatedly said that Saddam was not in compliance on inspections and had kicked them out of the country over and over again. They also had said that none of their inspections had been COMPLETED in 2002..that's why all the lefties used that as an excuse to leave the murdering tyrant in charge of Iraq. You can not have it both ways.
I hate it when premature evacuation happens.
Check your facts much more carefully. It was not Bush's argument. It was actually Clinton's, Bush was just parroting it. As was every other intelligence agnecy in the world, even the Inspectors themselves stated with conviction that Saddam had WMD's.
If you notice further up that's exactly what I stated. It doesn't matter who said it first. Both were wrong.
The whole police action was based on assumptions. Look at Bush's SOTU Address with the laundry list. He assumed since the WMDs couldn't be accounted for (although in '95 one of their generals admitted as much that all programs were dead) they automatically they must exist in weapons form. Hell, let's start a rumor the WMDs were magicked to Syria to give the hawks a reason to attack that nation. Oh wait a minute, World Nut Daily went on about that one for awhile already haven't they? Didn't gather much steam has it?
the IAEA & Unmovic had repeatedly said that Saddam was not in compliance on inspections and had kicked them out of the country over and over again
And yet somehow they were able to inventory 500 tons of yellowcake without much problem weren't they?
This is a little off subject, but has anyone seen the RNC online ad? The background music is an old Traffic song with same album title called, "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" with Steve Winwood on the vocals. Brings back memories of the old college days.
You, my friend, truly need to be zotted from this website. You just keep repeating the same old lame liberal arguments straight from the DNC talking points over and over again. Many here have given you link after bloody link to counter your arguments and like a mind numb robot, you keep repeating the same disinformation presented by the leftists in this country to undermine our military and our country.
WHY do you keep saying 'POLICE ACTION' over and over again in this conversation about the War in Iraq? US military action was approved of by the majority of the US CONGRESS! That can hardly be 'police action' on any scale.
THE UNITED STATES MILITARY can not be compared to 'police action' on any scale other than in some leftist moonbats mind. Go away..I am tired of playing with your stupidity.
(Administrator, please review this person's posts, his intentions on Free Republic are suspect, imho.)
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