Fox News reporting marines find "weapons grade plutonium"

Fox News ^

[JustRight]

On TV right now.

[mabelkitty]

I'm worried that this information wasn't supposed to come out yet, as the actually stuff is missing.

[epluribus_2]

heavy water would not make the detectors go off the scales. Bad batteries might. Or partially processed plutonium waiting for a new highspeed centrifuge to concentrate it.

[finnman69]

Dunno, just posted what I found online. but Tom Clancy certainly implies it can be done.

[mabelkitty]

This should explain that high rate of leukemia in Iraqi children. Highest in the world.

[PhiKapMom]

Yep! Just move along!!!! Nothing to see here!!!! That is the impression the inspectors left me with at the 7 March briefing!

Seems that the Inspectors have the mantra down of the Clintonites when they don't want to admit to something!! Nothing there!

[A CA Guy]

I don't buy that until tests are run. This could simply be drums of Hillary's sweat.

[Fabozz]

"It took square mile after square mile of facilities, constructed at the cost of billions, in several states."

No, you're thinking of uranium enrichment, which is a very large-scale and difficult engineering endeavor. Even then, the "square mile after square mile of facilities" was mostly required because we were trying a number of different approaches to the problem. Plutonium separation, by contrast, is an easy chemical process. All the plutonium needed by the Manhattan Project was produced in this one building at Hanford:

You can determine the scale by comparing it to the cars in the parking lot—a few hundred yards long, so bigger than one football stadium but by no means impossible to hide underground. It is completely believable that al-Tuwaitha could have a plutonium refinery in its basement.

[freedomson]

C'mon, Rip Van Arthurus, get up to speed. :)

[Coop]

Yep, you can't make nuclear WEAPONS under a stadium :-)

Sure you can. It's just a real bear to sell season tickets!

[VRWCTexan]

My limited understanding is that we have the cababilities to determine the source(s) of this type of material thru analysis - e.g. Chinese, Russian, etc.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Heavy water is not radioactive. In fact, there's a certain percentage (1% ??) of heavy water in all water.

[dfwgator]

Oh come on. This isn't anything. It is just pesticides. Plutonium kills more bugs than Sarin. It's a dual use ingredient. /sarcasm

It's a floor wax and a dessert topping as well.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I'm holding off on pinging our worthless paleocon "friends" until confirmation.

[MineralMan]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1573-2003Apr9.html

Reported here first, before Fox.

[rhombus]

OK, any more info on this? Has any other network picked it up? How do they know it's "weapons grade"?

[epluribus_2]

EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

blekh!!

[Constitution Day]

Rip Van Arthurus

LOL. No kidding.

[John H K]

The record of embeddeds who are not qualified at all to assess WMD claims, interacting with US military personnel low on the chain of command in the field (who I am sure are fine, qualified folk at their level but they really aren't careful about what they say or claim, or how its interpreted) has been pretty bad so far; but not because of any malicious lying or fabrication, of course.

I'm sure anything that checks out fully will be announced by Franks or Rumsfeld.

Of course, up till now, people have been claiming we wouldn't announce anything because we were afraid the Iraqis would then use it. And from now on, people will claim we won't announce any WMD finds in order to "not panic the public" or some such nonsense.

[concerned about politics]

DU Dummies.....as predicted....

9. Of Course...

the Agency has had several days to get the "evidence" well planted.

[fight_truth_decay]

In one case, more than a dozen soldiers were sickened or developed rashes after they spent time in or around a military installation near Albu Muhawish, a town east of Karbala. Maj. David Wolken, a physician at a MASH unit, said there was no question in his mind that the rashes were connected to the men's exposure to chemicals, but probably not "finished" nerve agents.

This was KRT Wire yesterday.