Nuke component unearthed in Baghdad back yard

CNN ^ | 25 June 2003 | From David Ensor

[July 4th]

WASHINGTON (CNN) --The CIA has in its hands the critical parts of a key piece of Iraqi nuclear technology -- parts needed to develop a bomb program -- that were dug up in a back yard in Baghdad, CNN has learned.

[HassanBenSobar]

Iraq itself admitted it made tons of nerve gas, thousands of liters of anthrax, etc. They never produced any evidence that they destroyed it. These admissions came in the mid-nineties. Do you believe they destroyed these stockpiles and just 'forgot' to show the inspectors they had done so? Explain that before you accuse Bush of lying.

[jwalsh07]

Trusting your instincts in the face of undeniable facts may work in leftieville but in the real world, it's loonie.

[ImpeachandRemove]

"Daschle "saddened""

True, but the ones I feel sorry for are Dean and Kerry. They look like complete morons!

[VRWC_minion]

Don't get too comfortable on that limb, I would be a bit miore circumspect on the possibility you are flat out wrong. Lets examine the hints the reporter leaves us in his report:

Now that he is safe, Obeidi said he believes other scientists would come forward with other components of Iraq's weapons program.

< Snip >

The parts and documents Obeidi gave the CIA were shown exclusively to CNN at CIA headquarters in Virginia.

< Snip >

"It begins to tell us how huge our job is," Kay said

< Snip >

The U.S. government told CNN the security and safety issues have been dealt with and there is no risk now in telling the story fully.

< Snip >

Obeidi said he felt unsafe in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion and that he was getting pressure from different corners of the country

Its obvious to me that the author of this piece knows a lot more about withheld information and is just dying to try and tell us that there is more on its way. The author has telegraphed as best as he can to the world that there is a whole lot more to come from this investigation that is being held back.

[VRWC_minion]

You: "we expected to find more than a barrel of ragtag parts of an old nuclear program."

The expert: "would have saved Saddam's regime several years and as much as hundreds of millions of dollars for research. "

Some rag tag ?

Say, exactly how old does a nuclear program have to be before its outdated ? Are you equating nuclear weapons construction to DOS 3.1 ?

[leftiesareloonie]

The anthrax I don't know enough about to say. By the mid-nineties any VX he had produce in the eighties was just useless sludge. WIthout ongoing programs, his old VX was a non-entity.

I don't know enough about the biochemistry of anthrax to know about the state of that.

Anyway, you don't quite have your facts straight. They did try to produce evidence that it was destroyed.

Second, there was a dispute between the inspectors and Iraqi scientist about how much they had produced.

Iraq claimed only laboratory quantities. Inspectors claimed that they had the CAPACITY to produce a great deal more.

Nothing undisputed was EVER established about the amounts of anthrax ACTUALLY produced. The confusion over this was due to deliberate adminstration obsfuscation.

Look, there may have been decent geo-political reasons for the war. I'm fairly certain it was broad geo-politics that drove the Bushies. It had nothing whatsoever to do with trumped up WMD and AL Quaeda links. That was all just for public consumption.

You have to understand, this crowd, like almost all political elites, unfortunately, believes that the broad public just needs to be stage managed, not seriously and openly engaged.

Most of the time that's okay. I'm a big, old boy. I've been in lots of battles. I understand how the game works.

But not since the Vietnam has the populace been so severely stage managed into such a questionable adventure.

II'm telling you these folks put LBJ and his bunch to shame.


And please don't call me a liberal. Call me a old fart cynic, whose sent to many frogs in politics to believe that a prince will ever come.

[null and void]

ummm.. because they don't say baby milk factory on them?

A baby milk factory is pretty high tech. It isn't easy to milk a baby...

[VRWC_minion]

Are you trying to say that Bush was being deceptive in his SOTU

He was very clear to me. He never made the case that Saddam posed an imminent threat of using the WMD. He did however clearly tell him to disarm and cooperate or he would be disarmed by us. What did you hear ?

[Sacajaweau]

The whole world acknowledges that Saddam has used WMD before and has not accounted for huge amounts of VX, mustard gas, anthrax etc, etc.. Only a fool would say "we can't find them so he must not have them" AND "He certainly wouldn't use them" if he had them.

But then again, you could be right. In the 4 years of the absence of inspectors, he could have shipped them to the highest bidder. It's the old shell and pea game and the "operator" is(was) very clever.

[null and void]

three ways of enriching Uranium; centrifuge, gas diffusion, and one other. I can't recall the third method.

A modified mass spectrometer.

[Constitutional Patriot]

The question should be "why was this burried in a scientist's back yard?"

This is a smoking gun. I can only imagine that we will be unearthing many more components of Iraq's WMD programs pretty soon. When this happens I want the President to go on TV and (in so many words) tell the socialists (American and European) to get bent.

[leftiesareloonie]

That Iraq was a "grave and gathering" danger, that he had reconstitute WMD programs, that he had stockpiles of them, that he had links with Al Quaeda "dating back ten years." that we could not be assured that he would not give WMD to Al Quaeda.

[jwalsh07]

I don't know enough about the biochemistry of anthrax to know about the state of that.

Google anthrax spores. You should understand the properties of spores if you are going to discuss the threat from anthrax.

[TomB]

NONE of them flat out asserted that Iraq possessed active WMD programs or stockpiles

Who is "none"?

[VRWC_minion]

Iraqi Unearths Pre-'91 Nuke Program Items

33 minutes ago

Add Top Stories - AP to My Yahoo!

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A former Iraqi nuclear scientist has provided American authorities parts and documents from Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s nuclear weapons program from over 12 years ago, a U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

AP Photo

The scientist, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, said he had kept the parts buried in his garden at his Baghdad home on the orders of Saddam's government, according to the intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Once sanctions against Iraq (news - web sites) ended, the material was to be dug up and used to reconstitute a program to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon, Obeidi claimed to U.S. officials.

U.S. authorities believe Obeidi's statements are credible, and they are regarded as evidence that Iraq had an effort to hide parts of its original programs from U.N. inspectors.

Still, the intelligence official acknowledged the find was not the "smoking gun" that U.S. authorities are seeking to prove the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had an active program to develop a nuclear weapon.

Before the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites), Obeidi headed Iraq's program to make centrifuges that would enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, the official said. Most or all of that program was dismantled after U.N. inspections in the early 1990s.

Details of Obeidi's activities during the past decade were not immediately available, although he was interviewed often by inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency in 2002, the official said.

Obeidi turned over a two-foot-tall stack of documents that includes detailed designs for centrifuges, intelligence officials said. Obeidi told intelligence officials the parts from his garden were among the more difficult-to-produce components of a centrifuge.

Assembled, the components would not be useful in making much uranium. Hundreds of centrifuges are necessary to make enough to construct a nuclear weapon in such programs.

Obeidi and his family have left Iraq, the intelligence official said.

Since the war, U.S. teams looking for evidence of Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs have been chasing leads and tips from Iraqis who stand to win reward money offered for evidence. So far no weapons have been found.

Before the second Gulf War, U.S. and allied intelligence agencies said they had evidence that Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, although some of that evidence has since been debunked.

Other evidence, such as reports that Iraq tried to import precision-made tubes for centrifuges, was hotly debated, with some experts saying those tubes were for conventional weapons.

Earlier this year, the U.N. agency said there was no new evidence or indications that Iraq was working to revive the program.

[leftiesareloonie]

UN security council, inspectors.

[Roscoe Karns]

DUmmies are saying that: 1) it was planted; 2) it's just a few parts; and 3) rightwing CNN held the story at the request of the US government, which proves they are in the tank for Bush.

They're so predictable.

[codercpc]

I saw John Gibson today interviewing a reporter in Iraq, and he too seemed to have something he was dying to share but couldn't. In fact the reporter (don't know what publication he was from) said that his organization has an imbedded reporter with the group that took out the convoy last week. He said that his co-worker knows what happened but couldn't report it yet.

John then went on to say something about "things we have been hearing". It was all very quick, but very strange. John did say that they are being led to understand that wasn't a "leading Iraqi figure" but couldn't say anymore than that.

This was all before the "Nuclear find", so maybe it had something to do with that? Maybe I was just reading to much in it, but I had the definite feeling something is up.

[leftiesareloonie]

Unfortunately, so are we -- though I still like our side better than theirs.

[Darksheare]

You mean, don't mock the mighty toothless and impotent UN that couldn't enforce a resolution in Iraq to save itself?
Why not?

If we all know that Iraq was called to disarm, then what's your beef with the centrifuge hidden in a barrel?
If that doesn't violate 1441, and every prior resolution, then what in your opinion does?
You've made quite a case for thinking that you're a Blix bot, and I've seen zero evidence to the contrary as shown by your whininmg about imminent threat and the cliched "this doesn't matter, where's the rest of it?"

Me, I'll celebrate when they find Sadman and KILL him like a dog.
'Course, being a former artillery type, I'd prefer to strap him to a wooden stake in the middle of an impact zone and see how many fire mission it takes before we actually kill him.