Posted on 09/24/2002 4:29:09 PM PDT by Pokey78
IRAQI agents have been scouring countries across Africa for uranium to help Saddam Hussein to build nuclear weapons, The Times has learnt. The dossier released by the Government yesterday noted in passing that Baghdad had recently tried to acquire “significant quantities of uranium from Africa”. But what it left out was evidence supplied to the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) showing that Saddam’s agents have secretly visited a number of African countries, 13 of which have uranium as a natural resource. Uranium, once enriched, could form the core of a nuclear bomb, greatly increasing Saddam’s ability to hold the world to ransom. To date, however, there is no evidence that he has succeeded it acquiring it. “If Iraq had succeeded in buying uranium from Africa, the dossier would have said so,” one Whitehall source said. One country the Iraqis are known to have targeted is the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, though no uranium has been extracted there for several years. The mine that produced the uranium used in the American bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 is in an area presently controlled by Zimbabwean troops. The dossier draws on top secret intelligence, and refers only generally to “Africa” as a potential source of uranium, possibly because of the fear that too detailed an insight might expose the sources. The dossier states that Iraq has pressed ahead with the production of biological and chemical weapons, which can be deployed in just 45 minutes, and that it is developing new missiles with a range of 1000km (600 miles). The document also says that Saddam may have given his younger son Qusay the power to order the use of such weapons. What the dossier does not do is link Saddam to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon. Some hawks in the Bush Administration have tried to make that link, but Britain’s intelligence community never believed it existed. The JIC has concluded that Saddam has no sympathy or support for Islamic fundamentalism. The Joint Intelligence Committee brings together the heads of MI6, MI5, GCHQ, the Government’s signals intelligence centre in Cheltenham, the Chief of Defence Intelligence, as well as policy makers from the Foreign Office, Defence Ministry, Home Office, Treasury and Department of Trade and Industry. Officials from all of these played a part in drawing up the dossier, which will also have benefited from information from America and probably Israel. The Prime Minister admitted that although it was an unprecedented publication of intelligence material, some of the most sensitive information had had to be excluded.
Worried? I know I am.
The mine that produced the uranium used in the American bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 is in an area presently controlled by Zimbabwean troops.
At least we know one thing from this attempt - Saddam has U processing capability.
Now there's a trusting soul. Apparently there's no possibility that Iraq may have obtained uranium from Africa and it didn't appear in the dossier. Nope, that dossier is the Word of God, complete and infallible.
I wonder if this "Whitehall source" leaves his house unlocked, the keys in his car and tells his children to trust strangers?
You cannot prove a negative.
No, they want one so they can accuse Bush of not acting decisively while they were obstructing him.
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