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.

[mewzilla]

CNN just had a live interview with Boettcher again. He said two things of note: That Obeidi says he knows of at least three more gas centrifuges that were purchased at the same time as the one in his backyard (though he doesn't know where they are, and he did give the US the names of some people to ask). And that there is NO dual use for these things. They were to be used in the weapons program.

[ContentiousObjector]

No, but if you were running from a burning building and there was a laptop sitting on a table that would soon be destroyed... wouldn't you grab it?

[Cyber Ninja]

To quote my self: "They are going to be digging up WMD's in Iraq for the next hundred years".

CB^D

[VRWC_minion]

Do you disagree with the reporters following statement

Experts said the documents and pieces Obeidi gave the United States were the critical information and parts to restart a nuclear weapons program and would have saved Saddam's regime several years and as much as hundreds of millions of dollars for research.

[Right Wing Professor]

The picture you posted is a regular lab centrifuge, not a gas centrifuge. Gas centrifuges are used in uranium enrichment. For heaven's sake, if you don't know anything, don't post!

[jimbo123]

CO has gone bonkers.

[Seeking the truth]

the mobile labs were support trailers for barrage balloons,

Are you the owner of that bridge in Brooklyn?

[wewillnotfail]

bump for history

[VRWC_minion]

He didn't GRAB it on his own

"I have very important things at my disposal that I have been ordered to have, to keep, and I've kept them, and I don't want this to proliferate, because of its potential consequences if it falls in the hands of tyrants, in the hands of dictators or of terrorists," said Obeidi, who has been taken out of Iraq with the help of the U.S. government.

You might want to wait for the facts to come in rather than specualte why its rational for you to be out on that limb so far when you can hear Bush's chain saw reving up.

[Right Wing Professor]

No, I just know enough about lab equipment to know making a huge deal out of a lab gas centrifuge is going to make you look awfully foolish

Well, I've been using laboratory centrifuges, such as the one whose picture you posted, in research for over 30 years, I've never heard of a 'lab gas centrifuge', and am pretty sure who's looking 'awfully foolish' !

[pfflier]

A crack in the dam...

[gov_bean_ counter]

There has been a reason that most of the Congressional intel committee members have stayed away from the WMD question.

[ContentiousObjector]

Because the scientist probably stole it?

If the regime were planning on using it, they would have stored it in a bunker or some other secure place, not a hole in the ground.

The scientist probably burried it thinking the first war wouldn't last long and he could dig it up in a few weeks, when Iraq lost and was disarmed, there was no reason to bother.

You don't burry sensitive and sophisticated electronics in a dirt hole in the ground as a means of long term storage, the probability of this stuff being servicable is less than zero.

would you bury your washing machine or television in the back yard?

[Frank_Discussion]

A laptop, perhaps. It would depend the speed of the burn. But this isn't a laptop, it's a heavy, bulky gas centrifuge. You can't walk out with it cradled under your arm, and finding a truck or something to carry it out on, to BURY IT IN THE GROUND AT HOME, is a dubious idea at best.

And somebody would notice.

[Dolphy]

No, I just know enough about lab equipment to know making a huge deal out of a lab gas centrifuge is going to make you look awfully foolish.

And finding one buried in a rose garden looks innocent? I understand what you are saying about context but that works both ways.

[wewillnotfail]

i love the handcream and tissues in the background!

[Frank_Discussion]

I was wondering about that.

[ContentiousObjector]

the point is if I was a troll, I would have been banned years ago

[eureka!]

"As myself and many Freepers have warned the Bush haters----the gov't is probably withholding disclosure of information while the investigation continues. Don't assume that weapons are not being discovered just because they are not being reported."

Yep. I find it interesting that Rummy & W just recently said "we'll find WMD stuff" while CNN is sitting on this story. Kinda coinky dink, dontcha think? W also just said recently we'll be getting Saddam & OBL, eventually. Hmmmmm. Meanwhile the Rats have their shovels firmly in hand, digging their holes. I sure like the way this administration works....

[mewzilla]

Check out this link from 2002. Talk about prescient. Here's the interesting bit (this is from an interview with James Woolsey):

There are only two kinds of people who believe anything other than what former President Clinton said: those who work for Saddam and ostriches. This is all a charade. Everybody knows he has chemical and bacteriological weapons. He refused to declare hundreds of tons of VX gas and sarin and thousands of liters of anthrax and botuleum. Once the U.N. inspectors discovered these because of (the former head of the weapons program) Hussain Kamal's defection in 1995, Saddam said, ''Oh, those biological weapons.'' How credulous does someone have to be to believe Saddam now?

We may not have evidence that can be shown until Iraq is liberated and the buried gas centrifuges and bottles of anthrax and canisters of VX are turned up.