ISIS In Iraq Have Saddam Hussein’s WMD, Was George Bush Right To Fear Terrorist Attack In America?

Inquisitr.com ^ | August 12, 2014 | Staff

[lbryce]

With the ISIS in Iraq having access to old stockpiles of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, some websites are now claiming former President George W. Bush has been “exonerated.” Some even go so far as to raise the fear of ISIS in America launching a terrorist attack. But are there actual limits to the Iraq WMD stockpiles the ISIS fighters have managed to recover?

SNIP

For example, this is what a website called Political Ears published the other day:
“President Obama is currently meeting privately with his cabinet to discuss the news from Iraq that ISIS has discovered scores of Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam Hussein had hidden before the start of the US Invasion in 2003. The UN security council is scheduled to meet for an emergency session…. Jihadists now control nuclear, chemical, and biological WMD, creating a global crisis of the highest order. It is now believed that ISIS is now able to threaten the US Homeland with a mushroom cloud of destruction in as little as 10 hours. ISIS has called for a summit with participating axis of evil nations to discuss strategy.”

[silverleaf]

Niger, not Nigeria

Saddam bought yellowcake from Niger many many years ago
(remember Osirak) It was under UN surveillance

He needed to establish a commercial ties in place to replace it after the UN monitoring ended, or to be available at an unmonitored site

Thus the intelligence reports that the Iraqi govt was negotiating for yellowcake, the story supposedly debunked by the garrulous globetrotting Mr Sweet Mint Tea Wilson

[silverleaf]

the French helped saddam hussein design and build his Osirak nuclear facility, the facility Israel bombed weeks before it went into production

a lonely story about the shipment of “French controlled” yellowcake from their mines showed that lightly guarded or unguarded convoys trekked over vast African areas for days making multiple overnight stops in small villages before ending up in warehouses in Benin.

“French control” indeed

[Dave346]

September 15, 2013
Syrian opposition charges Assad sending chemical weapons ‘back’ to Iraq

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/09/syrian_opposition_charges_assad_sending_chemical_weapons_back_to_iraq.html

[RayChuang88]

The threat of a nerve gas attack is that some nerve gases--notably Tabun or GA--are easily made with a home still. As such, any terrorist who really want to cause trouble can make Tabun nerve gas in a chemistry lab not much more than the lab used to make methamphetamine. The release of the nerve gas could cause excrutiating deaths that occur within 30 minutes of exposure if an antidope is not quickly applied.

[RetiredTexasVet]

“...thinking by the “experts”...”

The first thing that popped into my mind when reading that was an image of the Three Stooges (Larry, Curly, & Moe or Jones, Mann and Hansen).

[Qiviut]

~snicker~ :-)

[lepton]

In 2004 they were excoriating the Bush administration for not having secured the yellowcake, and the specialized MDX and RDX explosives...then promptly re-forgot about it after the election.

[Kackikat]

Yes, Niger...my bad on spelling.

[BCW]

Seem so...then again hell is far worst...so I hoped he enjoyed all those vacations he took...payback is going to be a lifetime...

[Pelham]

Yellowcake is hardly a WMD. It is a low radioactive intermediate stage of processed uranium ore. Every country in the world that mines uranium ore produces yellowcake.

U-235 is needed to produce a bomb. Weapons grade uranium is 90% U-235. Yellowcake is a very long way from that, it is 99% U-238.

[Kackikat]

Does it really matter if it is already a bomb or able to make 50 nuclear bombs...the grade is irrelevant here, because this is the yellowcake that Cheney and Bush said was in Iraq. It was discovered buried near the Iran Border, this whole thing was about keeping Iran from getting it.

The miltary sat on it for over 3 years, as they found it in 2003 but were afraid to move it that close to Iran until it was safer to do so and had a place to be shipped.

Why don’t you go ‘strain a nat and swallow a camel somewhere else’!

[Kackikat]

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_09/IraqUranium

[Pelham]

“Does it really matter if it is already a bomb or able to make 50 nuclear bombs...the grade is irrelevant here”

I suppose it’s irrelevant if you like scare stories and don’t mind being ignorant.

U-235 is bomb uranium. Weapons grade uranium needs to be 90% U-235.

Power reactors use enriched uranium of maybe 5% U-235. As high as 20% in small reactors like the Navy uses.

By contrast yellowcake’s natural U-235 level is 0.7%. Yellowcake is over 99% U-238, the wrong isotope.

I’m sure that there’s probably someone who has calculated how many bombs the world’s civilian power reactors could make, just like someone calculated how many bombs Saddam could have produced out of his pile of yellowcake. But in the real world as opposed to the theoretical it’s not all that easy to do.

It is no easy chore to separate U-235 from U-238. They are chemically identical. It takes gas diffusion and/or a whole lot of centrifuges, a lot of electric power and a lot of time to separate U-235 from U-238. Having a pile of yellowcake wasn’t going to do Saddam Hussein any good without the industrial base necessary to extract the U-235. He would have been better off buying up spent nuclear fuel rods as they have more U-235 and some plutonium as well.

“Why don’t you go ‘strain a nat and swallow a camel somewhere else’!”

Why don’t you learn how to spell ‘gnat’. And I’m sure it would be easier for you if no one was pointing out the nonsense in your posts.

[Kackikat]

Maybe you should learn how to post without taking half the internet with you....lol

I gave you a link, so buzz off, you did not get the drift of what I was saying and your lack of understanding is not my fault.

[Pelham]

I read the articles that you linked to. They don’t counter anything that I said. From what you’ve posted I don’t think that you understand what those articles say.

This from your own armscontrol.org link:

“Yellowcake is a solid compound made from refined uranium ore. It is converted into uranium hexafluoride and enriched into low-enriched uranium (LEU) for civilian nuclear reactors.”

“Cameco spokesperson Lyle Krahn indicated that the company intends to process the uranium in Ontario and sell it as fuel for nuclear reactors. “

The yellowcake still had to be processed to even become low-enriched uranium fuel suitable for a reactor. It’s not remotely the WMD that you were claiming it to be.

In theory 550 tons of yellowcake could yield 50 uranium bombs. In theory a silo of ammonium nitrate fertilizer could yield hundreds of WMDs. In theory a heart medicine factory could yield a WMD.