WMDs for the Taking? (Iraqis looted radioactive materials -- enough for Dirty bombs)

MSNBC ^ | May 19, 2003 | Rod Nordland

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

"Radioactive material is not WMD."

Gee, does that mean that a nuclear bomb is not a WMD? After all, it is made of Radioactive material.

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

"There were medical use radiation items. Google search to see where we store our hospital radiation items (nuclear power plants are right up there)."

And since when did Iraq have nuclear power plants?

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

"If these were potential WMD items and a WMD site may I ask why we did not send our forces there to secure it from looters? I mean we semt troops to secure the oli ministry building in Baghdad but we had no troops available to secure this WMD site? If this is a WMD site then heads should role for it not being secured as soon as possible--hell it is not even secured by any troops right now!!"

Try to keep up on the news. Our forces found this site after it had been looted, and before they had reached the oil ministry. We do have it secured now, but like I said it was already looted when our forces got there.

[Destro]

but like I said

Why should I care about what you said? When the good colonel who was there said it all: They [U.S. forces] didn’t try to stop the looting, says Colonel Madere, because “there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place.”

It is a simple statement--His forces were there in position to stop the looting but had no orders to do so nor to secure the site. Why are you having such a hard time with it?

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

"Um----I thought the whole freaking point about invading Iraq was because the possibility was that the UN was not controling WMD (which was good enough for me)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So in we go fight all the way to Baghdad and....nothing! We secure the empty oil ministry building (it has vital records of oil sales and contracts stored there) yet we send not one platoon to secure this "potential WMD" site!! So who do we fire and courtmartial? The buck stops at Gen. Frank? Rumsfeld?"

We got to this site and secured it after it was looted and before we got to Baghdad. No investigation to show what all had been there was started until after the entire area was secured. There was suspicion about what was taken and the damage (radioactive barrels taken that could kill the looters) before we took Baghdad. Try again on your America is always wrong. Either that or do a little research before you spout off next time. And no I will not do your research for you this time. Do your own.

[Destro]

We got to this site and secured it after it was looted and before we got to Baghdad.

Wrong. This very same article states as follows In the rush to Baghdad, Coalition forces raced past most suspected WMD sites, and looters took over. coupled with Colonel Madere's comments They didn’t try to stop the looting, says Colonel Madere, because “there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place.”

PS: It is not blaming America to highlight the failures of those that did not carry out the president's stated war aims. It is blaming the Defense Dept. I just don't know how hig the blame should go. It seems fitting that the buck stops either at Gen. Franks or all the way SoD Rumsfeld for this failure to secure the WMD sites that were raced past in the drive to Baghdad.

[American in Israel]

Dirty bombs are not WMD. They do not do mass destruction, A ounce of anthrax is far more dangerous than a pound of radio active garbage strewn around.

Expensive to clean up yes, but mass destruction? I don't think so...

[ex-Texan]

*BUMP !*

[activationproducts]

A dirty bomb does not meet the defintion of WMD. It would have to be a workable fission weapon to be one.

[browardchad]

may I ask why we did not send our forces there to secure it from looters?

 

This is about the 15th article I've seen on Al Tuwaitha since the war began. The first stories reported on high levels of radioactivity due to looting of stored radioactive waste before allied forces got to the site, after these same Iraqi scientists abandoned Al Tuwaitha, which covers an area equivalent to a small city.

 

Now the media is taking the word of these same scientists, who lived nearby in upscale digs in the midst of surrounding squalor and poverty -- blaming the U.S.

 

The UN inspection teams knew about these sites, and the waste, for years, and did nothing but put seals on the barrels -- now they are deeply saddened that the inevitable has happened.

Meanwhile, according to a  2002 Wall Street Journal article, the number of cancer patients in Iraq had risen 50% in the preceding 10-year period, and the Iraqi regime refused full medical surveys that could pin down the cancer’s cause, preferring to blame the rise in cancer on the sanctions, and depleted uranium shells used during Gulf War I (which has been proved bogus), and claimed it couldn't treat these people because sanctions forbade the import of Cobalt-60 needed for cancer treatment, but  according to this article "major international suppliers say they have never received Iraqi requests for the sources, and Iraqi health officials decline to discuss the matter.  In theory, such medical supplies are (were) allowed."

The bottom line is that Iraqis have been intentionally or carelessly exposed to radioactive materials for decades -- heck, according to this story, the same Cobalt-60 the regime said it couldn't import was used as an instrument of torture in Iraqi prisons.

Anyone who chooses to take at face value stories based on questionable motives of Iraqi doctors, scientists or officials (think crimes against humanity) is obviously hearing what they want to hear.

[Destro]

So the Colonel's statement was said in error.....

[browardchad]

“There aren’t enough troops in the whole Army,” says Col. Tim Madere, the overseer of V Corps’s sensitive-site teams. “There just aren’t enough experts to do everything.”

"U.S. officers say the center had already been ransacked before their troops arrived. They didn’t try to stop the looting, says Colonel Madere, because “there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place.”

 

Which of the above quotes?

 

The first is self-explanatory, considering the hundreds of sites that contain nuclear contamination throughout the country, so I assume you refer to the second: "They didn't try to stop the looting...“there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place.”

 

From the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, April 9, 2003:

 

Outside the gates yesterday, children on donkeys dragged air conditioners from the area, part of the ongoing looting of government offices, Iraqi army forts and Baathist Party headquarters.

The nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians, housed in a plush neighborhood near the campus, have run away, along with Baathist party loyalists.

Farmers in rags drive the scientists' Mercedes and Land Rovers across Highway Six, filled with looted color televisions, silk rugs and Burberry suits.

That's where the Marines see the grand irony.

Amidst grinding poverty, where peasants eke an existence out of dust and river water, the Saddam Hussein regime built a lavish atomic weapons program. In a nation with some of the world's largest petroleum reserves, Saddam saw the need for nuclear energy.

"It's going to take some very smart people a very long time to sift through everything here," said Flick. "All this machinery. All this technology. They could do a lot of very bad things with all of this."

The mayor of this high-tech city is, for now, Capt. John Seegar, a combat engineer commander from Houston, Tx. He trudges up the 10-story hillocks hiding the campus from the surrounding villages and, crossing near a demolished mud bunker, it all opens up, gleaming and swaddled in roses.

"I've never seen anything like it, ever," said Seegar, who leads a company of combat engineers turned into combat grunts. "How did the world miss all of this? Why couldn't they see what was happening here?"

Seegar's biggest headache: Peasant looters, who keep cutting through the miles of barbed wire, no longer electrified because the war killed the power. He cradles in his arms blueprints in Arabic, showing recent construction, and maps in English, detailing which buildings test radioactive. Next to each, Seegar's placed an asterisk.

"Three weeks ago, the scientists seemed to have abandoned the complex," said Seegar. "That's what the villagers say. The place was protected by the Special Republic Guard, but they deserted it, too. Four days ago, everyone was gone. Then we came."

For him, Al-Tuwaitha is like a crime scene, and the next detectives on the atomic beat will be Army specialists.

Seegar promises to hold the nuclear site until international authorities can take over. His men hunker down in sandbag bunkers, sleepless, gripping machine guns."

From the AFP (a non-friendly source), May 8, 2003:

"Coalition forces have secured the facilities that housed the natural and low enriched uranium that was at those sites," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Monday.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that a Pentagon team sent to examine a radioactive waste dump in Iraq found it so heavily looted they could not tell whether dangerous materials had been taken.

Pentagon experts have so far visited seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program since major combat ended last month. None of them are intact and two had been plundered extensively, it said.

The IAEA's Melissa Fleming said "tonnes" of natural uranium were at the Al-Tuwaitha site but that the material, known as yellowcake, was not suitable for so-called dirty bombs.

She said the IAEA had removed or destroyed highly enriched uranium, fissile material that can be used in a nuclear bomb, from Iraq before its inspectors left in 1998.

She said the current concern was over so-called "radioactive sources" and that there were over 1,000 of them in Iraq, "including large numbers that were stored in Tuwaitha."

The bottom line is that Al-Twaitha is a sprawling complex, both above and below ground -- nuclear waste and contaminated materials were dumped all over the site, and the materials that the UN alternately says they "removed and destroyed" or "sealed,"  (depending on the day of the week) are in an underground facility being guarded by U.S. forces -- a facility that was looted before the Marines got there.

It's all how you shape the news -- but, of course, a team of a couple of dozen UN inspectors -- the same inspectors who blithely whizzed through nuclear waste dumps that exposed the population to radiation -- can make everything alright, stop the looting and magically pronounce it's all the fault of the U.S., and so verify this MSNBC story.  /sarcasm

[Destro]

So why no orders to do anything other than look at the looters looting?

[browardchad]

So why no orders to do anything other than look at the looters looting?

If you don't want to read the stories, and insist on basing your claims on one quote in one obviously slanted report, there's no point continuing the conversation, except to say that, given the rotted infrastructure of the country as a whole, continued unrest from armed enemies, dangers posed to our troops by radiation, and the huge expanse of the complex in question, you might think about the necessity of setting priorities with limited resources -- which right now don't include pouring thousands of troops into Al Tuwaitha, shooting looters on site and beginning a massive toxic waste cleanup.

I think if there's one thing we underestimated about Iraq, it was the disregard for human life on a massive scale. You don't set the results of that right in a month, or even a year.

[Destro]

I did read--so while they were cutting the babrbed wire--why didn't we shoot?

[CyberAnt]

And ... we have seen articles here on FR which showed that this site had been looted LONG BEFORE WE ENTERED IRAQ. There is no way we are to blame for this.

[CyberAnt]

I have wondered if the people who looted these facilities really understood what they were stealing. I read here on FR that some of the barrels which had contained very toxic elements were being used by ordinary townspeople. This causes me to wonder if the people who took the barrels had any idea what had been inside the barrels.

I have also read there have been idications some people in that location are now suffering from radiation sickness.

[FairOpinion]

"A dirty bomb does not meet the defintion of WMD."

---
You are incorrect. You can look up a thousand sites which categories WMD, and a radiological (aka "dirty" bomb) is listed in every one.

Here is just one place, "Wikipaedia" a free encyclopaedia on the net:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_mass_destruction


Weapons of mass destruction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are weapons designed to kill large numbers of people, usually civilians but also potentially military personnel. They are generally considered to be of limited military usefulness because their destructiveness is likely to trigger an extreme response. They are also known as Weapons of indiscriminate destruction, weapons of mass disruption and weapons of catastrophic effect.

The types of weapons traditionally considered to be in this class are referred to as NBC weapons:


nuclear weapons and radiological weapons
biological weapons
chemical weapons

United States law defines WMD as "to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people" using chemicals, a disease organism, radiation or radioactivity. However, the FBI also considers conventional weapons (ie, bombs) to become WMD: "A weapon crosses the WMD threshold when the consequences of its release overwhelm local responders". It is unclear whether this would apply to US bombing campaigns in Iraq, former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and so forth.


====

I think liberals just want to keep redefining what WMD is. When we find nuclear materials in Iraq, all of a sudden "that is not really WMD", when we'll find anthrax, VX, mustard gas, etc. all of a sudden according to liberals definition, those won't be WMD. Or if "only find" a few pounds, that won't be "really" WMD, never mind that, that amount could kill millions. In fact, I think according to liberals WMD doesn't even exist, there is no such thing, just to try to claim that there was no reason to attack Iraq.

[FairOpinion]

I tried too. But some people are totally immune to facts,logic and reason. As they say, some people (mostly Bush hating liberals) are capable of ignoring any amount of facts. All they care about is to blame Bush and the US troops for wahtever happens, real or manufactured ( as the museum looting of 170,000 priceless antiquities turned out to be total fabrication, but that didn't stop liberals and the liberal media from blaming the US troops on the front pages for weeks, just to detract from our major victory).

It is also intersting, just for the heck of it, I went to the World Socialist Website, and darn, if they aren't making the same points, as some people here, that first of all there are no WMDs in Iraq, and second of all, the US should have guarded them, and everything is our fault. I am sure this will sounds just like some of the posts you've been responding to in great detail, to no avail.

[activationproducts]

This is bad information. A dirty bomb will cause widespread panic, not widespread casualites. Unless you are talking about an increase in cancer rates decades after the material has been dispersed. The notion that widespread panic is close enough to widespread panic is ridiculous.

If you ask me only nuclear weapons should be called WMD.