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Pull your head up and read up on nuclear programs and source/waste radiation levels from a "real" nuclear program before you say anything else to make yourself look more foolish.

Oh, so you're personally guaranteeing that this is indeed an illegal weapons site with weapon-grade material? Have you personally seen the exact readings that were taken? Or are you saying that any radiation reading that is dangerous to humans automatically confirms the presence of weapons grade material? Because the article is notably lacking in the type of detail you seem to be taking as fact.

Tell you what, why don't you say exactly what portions of that article confirm the presence of weapons grade material?

I love guys who express such certainty at preliminary reports. Seeing what you want to see rather than what the evidence proves. For example, the article assumes that no underground areas were explored when IAEA inspected the facility. But hey, that isn't quite correct:

http://www.iraqwatch.org/un/IAEA/iaea-inspex-021503.htm

On February 13, 2003, the inspectors did the following:

Two inspection teams inspected two facilities within the Tuwaitha site 20km south of Baghdad. The first team included nuclear experts experienced in rock climbing and inspected previously inaccessible underground chambers within the old Tamuz 1 reactor complex that had been destroyed by bombing in 1981.

I freely admit that the IAEA may have screwed up. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. But to use your phrase, I find it rather "foolish" to jump to the conclusion you seem to have reached based on a very preliminary report.

Yes -

Rad levels high enough to give a person the symptoms described (vomiting after less than 3 hours exposure merely by walking INTO A ROOM with unshielded nuclear material) ARE found only after direct exposure to pre- and post-processed (exposed rad waste products) nuclear fuel. Consider that you can spend days (weeks even) camped out in a shutdown commercial power plant reactor and not get enough radiation exposure to cause vomiting. You can even spend days inside a US fuel-reprocessing plant and not get enough exposure to cause that kind of sickness.

Rad levels this high are NOT found in ANY power plants of ANY size at ANY location when the plant is shutdown. (Outside of the core itself that is - but, since exposed nuclear fuel IS the definition of a reactor core, what the inspectors missed/deliberately ignored is residue of their nuclear weapons program.) This type of contamination is like what was found when the Chernobyl reactor burned uncontrolled in the open air - and deposited raw chunks of core waste products on the fire fighters and plant workers.

The French have a good, reliable, safely controlled reactor program. They designed and built the Iraq reactor - and they DO NOT leave this kind of radiation exposed and unprotected. Power reactors of ANY NATION do NOT leave this kind of radioactive material levels stored in drums in underground caverns.

Covert, hidden fuel re-processing plants do.

Vomiting within 3 hours in healthy adult males from whole body gamma radiation occurs in fields higher than 300-600 Rads/hour. This is the ONLY radiation that a person could get exposed to by simply walking into a warehouse.

http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Surreptitious-Radiation-Administration.htm

Heck, you don't get 600 Rad fields SWIMMING in the spent fuel pools of commercial reactors. (Diving to the bottom of the pool - maybe ..... Draining a commercial fuel pool, then walking between the exposed rods - well, that equals what the Marines are said to have found: stored exposed nuclear fuel, either before or after reprocessing for extracting the Pu239 for bombs.)

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Then again, the UN inspectors were told to inspect the reactor site; and (technically speaking) these storage areas WERE outside of the fenced area of the reactor site. So I guess maybe the UN inspecctors were right: The hidden Iraq nuclear material WAS NOT stored at the site. The stored material was NOT in the area bombed either as the source you cited indicated - it was UNDERGROUND near the area that was bombed. And you don't need to be rock climbers to go underground and walk into a secret storage area. you just need unfettered access to the site, and a willingness to go look.

I agree, the nuclear material was not stored at the reactor site. It was stored under the site.

Or "next to" the site. ot outside the site.

Or something. Depends on what "is" is, I suppose.

I'd like to point out something that you've missed.

Which is more dangerous, from a practical standpoint?

A pound of C4, surrounded by a buffer, hence surrounded by 1kg of Anthrax spores?

A pound of C4, surrounded by a buffer, hence surrounded by 1kg of VX with a dispersal agent?

A pound of C4, NOT surrounded by a buffer (don't need it, eh?), and hence surrounded by ANY of the contents of ANY of those barrels.

Detonate each of these in A. New York, B. Los Angeles, and C. San Francisco.

Now, I riddle you this. Which city will you NOT want to live in, 1 year after the attack?

If you've followed me to this point -- you will realize that your premise about "weapons-grade" is faulty, because ANY material emitting enough REM IS WEAPONS GRADE, perhaps not fissionable, but weapons grade nonetheless.

I find that Iraq possessing several billion (trillion?)REM worth of Nuclear Waste is very notable; in fact, it's more notable than their possessing all or more than what they declared in their chemical and biologics stockpile and capability in 1991.

For someone who seems (at first appearance at least) to have some knowledge of physics, I am rather surprised that you didn't think of it this way.

On the record, I will say that I agree with the basic tenets of your skepticism, but that you're missing the forest for the log on a swinging rope crushing your skull.