Posted on 02/21/2016 5:27:38 AM PST by Kaslin
Now go and study the difference between a publisher (Townhall.com) and an author of an Op-ed (John Hawkins)
You’re not? Bwahahahaha, yeah right. Stop fooling yourself
George W got a bad rap and Trump would be wise to back off now that Jebby is out of it. W had his problems but I do have respect for him. Consider how things would have went down if Algore was elected.
“Bush lied. And I am not a liberal.’
So why did Clinton have his CIA falsify the reports and how do you know Bush knew Clinton’s CIA reports were false?
We went from purple fingers to total chaos because of the 2008 election. And then came 2012 when people knew what he was and decided to stay home or vote 3rd party anyway. That would show ‘em.
My Two Cents: while I was in Iraq in 2004-2005, a couple of CI guys I worked with had multiple reports from multiple sources of buried chemical weapons and delivery systems buried at various locations — and this was at the local/regional level.
In addition, Saddam did have a stockpile of yellow cake uranium which was removed in 2008. Some was semi-refined and containerized. This stockpile was documented by the UN weapons inspectors in previous years, but was still under Iraqi control. I cannot find the article anymore on 500,000 tons (@ five medium ship loads) of raw yellow cake removed from Iraq in 2008.
Saudi operatives flew the planes on 9/11.
Bin Laden was holed up in Afghanistan.
Where did Iraq fit into that scenario?
We bombed the wrong country. It should have been Saudi Arabia.
Everyone, including the Clintons, John Kerry, Schumer, Kennedy and nearly every liberal stated publicly that Sadam had WMD’s. It’s not hard to find on the internet. The truth has become hopelessly and sadly irrelevant.
Thanks for that.
Including the Useless Nations
500 tons of uranium shipped from Iraq, Pentagon says
by Brianna Keilar and Larry Shaughnessy Mon July 7, 2008
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/
Pentagon: U.S. secretly shipped Iraq’s low-grade uranium dating back to Hussein era
Officials: U.S. military spent $70 million for the transport of materials to Canada
“Yellowcake” uranium transfer was requested by the Iraqi government
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.
The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.
The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.
The “yellowcake” uranium transfer was requested by the Iraqi government at the encouragement of the U.S. government, Whitman said.
The United States approached Canadian company Cameco to bid for the material, according Cameco spokesman Lyle Krahn. He would not disclose the winning bid amount.
Krahn admitted that this was not a “routine transaction,” but he said the agreement was approved by the Canadian government and was carefully monitored.
The undertaking, named “Operation McCall” by Pentagon officials, was in the planning stages for months and was completed Saturday after the material had been in transit for weeks, according to Whitman.
He said yellowcake uranium is a commonly traded commodity used for nuclear power generation. It is not enriched and cannot be used without first going through a complicated enrichment process, he said, but because of the unstable nature of Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi government decided it should be moved out of that country. Iraq has no nuclear power generating plants.
The uranium was packed into 110 shipping containers moved by convoy from a facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. The containers were first moved to the secure International Zone in central Baghdad and then to Baghdad International Airport, where thery were loaded onto C-17 cargo planes.
It took 37 flights to move the shipping containers out of Iraq to a “third country,” Whitman said.
A Pentagon official who asked not to be named said that third country was Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean where the United Kingdom and the United States operate a joint military base.
From that third country, Whitman said, the containers were loaded onto the SS Gopher State, a U.S.-owned crane ship normally used to haul equipment in and out of war zones. The ship carried the uranium to Canada, where it was bought by Cameco, a private firm.
The uranium will be sent by truck to two processing plants in Ontario, Krahn said. Once it has been enriched for energy use it will be sold to power plant operators, he said.
The United States is Cameco’s largest customer, Krahn said, but he did not specify if the Iraq yellowcake would ultimately end up in the United States.
Whitman said the Department of Defense’s cost of securing and transporting the uranium from Tuwaitha to Canada was $70 million, and the government of Iraq had agreed in principal to reimburse the United States for part of that cost.
He said he could not say how much Iraq intends to repay the United States.
Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq
Last major stockpile from Saddam’s nuclear efforts arrives in Canada
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What’s now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
“Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq,” said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth “tens of millions of dollars.” A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.
“We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity,” he said.
Secret mission
The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.
And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam’s weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.
Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger — and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims — led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam’s nuclear efforts.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam’s fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.
“The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust,” said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.
Hurdles ahead of hauling yellowcake
Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait’s port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq’s Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.
Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.
An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.
But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It’s currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.
At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers — some leaking or weakened by corrosion — and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.
In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad’s international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.
On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.
The yellowcake wasn’t the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.
Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex.
The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.
Saddam’s stockpile
The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam’s nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.
The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.
Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.
But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive “hot zones” entombed in concrete during Saddam’s rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take “many years.”
The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.
A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.
A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Are you Code Pinko?
Too late for Trump to back off.
That was stupid of him to echo Code Pinko.
Can anyone refer me to a you tube which shows GW saying “we have to invade Iraq because they have WMD’s”?
OF COURSE THERE WERE
WE GAVE THEN TO SADDAM TO FIGHT IRAN
YEP
I haven’t parsed the entire articel but the statement that even Bernie Sanders said Iraq has WMDs does’t appear to be accurate. Invadign Iraq was strategic miscalculation of enormous scope. Saddam was a a counter weight to Iran. Nor was there as no clear and present danger to the US. The invasion was a mistake, pure and simple. No amount of “He would have developed...” can excuse such a previous error. Bush was looking for his war and used every deceit to achieve it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernie-sanders/flashback-rep-bernie-sand_b_8274612.html
Yep.
Your “authority” is the Huffington Post?
Are you sure you are on the right website?
The 500+ tons of yellow cake you’re referring to came from Iraq’s abandoned civilian nuclear program in the 1980s and had been stored there with the knowledge and under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency
The yellow cake was eventually removed as a safety precaution (you might recall hearing about looters using empty drums from the Tuwaitha nuclear research center for drinking water) but the stored yellow cake was not viewed as evidence of an attempt to acquire nuclear weapons by Saddam.
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