Posted on 11/18/2014 11:39:20 AM PST by SeekAndFind
After U.S. Central Command called on us to help transport, from Iraq, enough yellowcake uranium to make several atomic bombs stored at Saddam’s nuclear weapons complex, I realized why neither the Pentagon nor the White House advertised the presence of this WMD precursor: safety and security.
Before the U.S. military moved in to secure the facility after the 2003 invasion, looters had been there first. Even though the universally recognized yellow-and-black radioactivity warnings were posted on the bunkers, locals had ripped open the storage areas and stolen casks of yellowcake with many sickened as a result. More importantly, we did not want the insurgents alerted to the exposed stockpile as they might attack the facility.
This is also why the George W. Bush administration did not crow about the approximately 5,000 chemical munitions that U.S. forces uncovered throughout Iraq, as recently reported by the New York Times. That is a serious quantity of WMD, by any standard. Interestingly, the Bush team could have diluted near-uniform shock at the failure to find WMD by highlighting these discoveries instead of allowing the narrative we all know to solidify: “no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq found except a few dozen old, mustard-gas artillery shells left over from the 1980s Iran-Iraq War.” Yet President Bush and his advisors chose to protect the troops and the mission rather than score political points back on the war’s second front, the American body politic. (None of this, however, mitigates any unpreparedness by the Pentagon to treat service members exposed to chemical weapons.)
Before my company arrived to provide guards and to build and operate a base camp for U.S. Department of Energy scientists dissecting Saddam’s nuclear weapons facility, the American Army had occupied the site with almost a company of infantry. This was quite a bit of combat power tethered to a non-populated, static location when needed to actively defend the people against the elusive al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorists and Iranian-allied militias rampant until early 2008 when the American Surge forces and the Sunni Arab “Awakening” had turned the tide delivering our victory in the Iraq War.
The limited number of combat troops available did not permit fixing them at every site where WMD were found or might be found. Hence the requirement to not advertise that Saddam had left thousands of chemical weapons lying around, potentially under any mound in mostly flat Iraq. That would have set off a dangerous treasure hunt—and if found, a tremendous threat to American troops and everyone in Iraq especially if weaponized nerve gas had ended up with al-Qaeda.
We were able to move the yellowcake successfully because of our proven relationships with the tribes along our supply line to the nuclear weapons facility, located at the center of an area known as the “Triangle of Death,” due to extensive U.S. combat fatalities suffered there. Because of our and other U.S. government contractors’ employment of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, we helped drain the swamp (or “sea” in Maoist terms) whence the al-Qaeda insurgency sprung. The uranium operation caused us, as usual, to rent trucks from the surrounding tribes with comprehensive war-loss insurance (meaning if a truck got blown up then the owner took the loss).
This in turn caused the tribes to look outwards on the convoy movements to protect their expensive tractor trailers instead of inwards—searching for a chance to attack. Doing business for the tribes with the American government, and then the Iraqi government, turned out to be safer than supporting the nihilistic, totalitarian jihadis and the traitorous Sadrists, minions of Iran.
Regardless of what position one takes on the U.S. invasion, the world could not abide by large quantities of nuclear weapons precursor in the hands of the genocidal tyrant in Baghdad. As we are seeing with the current, seemingly endless negotiations with Iran, the millionaire mullahs of Tehran are using the pretext of “peaceful” nuclear power generation in order to assert that the denial thereof is a direct assault on a nation’s sovereignty.
Consequently, the concept that we could have gotten the yellowcake removed from Iraq as a part of lifting the rapidly degrading sanctions and truly certifying the country clean of all chemical weapons without the overthrow of Saddam defies logic and experience. The continued possession by Iraq of approximately 5,000 chemical warheads undiscovered after almost eight years of aggressive UN inspections along with the existence of enough yellowcake uranium to make 14 or so nuclear bombs with technology that the Iranians and Libyans already possessed calls for a new coda to replace “Bush lied, people died.” Certainly, we should look to the reinstatement of a principle justification for the American invasion of Iraq.
- Carter Andress is president of AISG, Inc. (American-Iraqi Solutions Group) and the author, with Malcolm McConnell, of Victory Undone: The Defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Its Resurrection as ISIS (Regnery, October 2014). Present at the Company’s start-up in Baghdad in March 2004. After a year break in service, he returned to take over the Company in November 2006. Carter led the AISG team operations that won and successfully executed over 75 US & Iraqi government contracts representing more than $250 million in Iraq reconstruction work. Carter has run his own international trade and business consulting firm for fifteen years in the former Soviet Union and nationwide in the United States. As CEO and principal, he took a company public through the SEC. He is a former US Army Infantry officer and graduate of Ranger School (Airborne). Carter has a BA from the University of the South (Sewanee, TN), and an MA from American University in Washington, DC. Carter is fluent in Russian and conversational in Iraqi Arabic.
The last thing the MSM would ever want to admit was that GWB was ever right about anything or that BHO was ever wrong about anything.
So the cooler heads did prevail.
I have criticized Bush on a number of issues. I have never criticized him for his actions in Iraq. Hussein was a blustering fool, capable of doing just about anything.
Thank heaven that yellow-cake no longer remains in Iraq.
And Bush rightly deserves kudos for that fact!
I believe our intelligence community had no problems throwing Bush under a bus.
I believe most in the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. lean more democrat. They benefit from bigger government. They’re part of it. It’s in their self-interest.
They stuck their fingers in their ears and sang, "Lalalalala I can't hear you! Lalalalalalala.."?
About the only way you could not know about it.
” The uranium operation caused us, as usual, to rent trucks from the surrounding tribes with comprehensive war-loss insurance (meaning if a truck got blown up then the owner took the loss).”
This makes no sense to me and it one of those odd sentences that frankly calls the premise and thus the conclusion of the article into question. Unless I am completely misunderstanding it.
If the (Iraqi) owner of a truck or trailer takes the loss (of a destroyed truck/trailer) there IS NO insurance. So...(the article says) the owners of the trucks sought to “look out for”, or even “defend against” Al Queda attacks.....? Really? You mean, if elements of Al Queda found an Iraqi helping US forces with his truck(s) they wouldn’t blow his brains out? So...he’d do that for some money, right? And some tribal dude is going to venture away from his ‘hood and keep watch over his truck?
And further...if WMDs were found, and clearly some were and some weren’t, why not spread disinformation as to WHERE they were found and thus use them as potential “bait” to lure terrorists interesting in grabbing them from a false location? Wouldn’t *you* do that if you found something you didn’t want to fall into the hands of people you were otherwise eagerly trying to kill?
Sorry, smells funny.
It doesn't make any sense.
Why wouldn't Pres. Bush tell the public the story after the mission was competed?
I think the new-world-order elites, like the Bushes, don't believe it is any of our business and if they need our votes they can always threaten us with the "greater evil candidate" at election time. It always works.
It was “classified” as well. No one was at liberty to talk freely about classified information.
Wow...
Were you not the same one who yesterday described yourself as a "Real Republican"?
Sorry, smells funny.
....actually stinks to high heaven. The secrecy was likely more due to the source of all the WMD being Carlisle Group buddies of GHWB and all his CIA friends. CIA working for their own benefit and profit since 1950....
ymmv
The 2 parts of your statement are contradictory. The first is correct and it doesn't "mean" the 2nd.
Simply put...the incentive to keep tight lips and tight watch over one's own truck was great. And it seems to have worked.
Let the records show that Bush was right about WMDs in Iraq but chose to keep quiet for the greater good of the mission.
well this sure was true of Wilson/plame.
Wilson felt free to say what he wanted about yellow cake because he knew Bush would be tight lipped in order to protect the convoy routes.
Any body who thought, claims, or still believes there were no WMDs in Iraq is either very stupid or has an agenda of their own.
Hear that you Dem/prog/libs; you stupid bastards!
I can believe that.
Can you imagine the Obama/Biden team under those circumstances?
And who knows what left Iraq and went to Syria.
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