[r9etb]

LOL!

Boys, you're working mighty hard to avoid the topic of this thread.

As for the other, see this article for an interesting discussion on the topic.

[Jolly Rodgers]

From: Reuters... IAEA officials never saw Britain's so-called genuine evidence, despite the fact that U.N. member countries were expected to provide all relevant intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction to the U.N. inspection teams.

The IAEA had been briefed about British intelligence on the Niger claim and concluded in March that everything said referred to the same transaction the agency believes was never attempted.

In a July 1 letter to U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, the IAEA's director of external relations wrote that it was clear that Iraq would never have been able to buy uranium from Niger.

"The alleged contract could not have been honored, as the export of uranium from Niger is fully controlled by international companies," IAEA's Piet de Klerk wrote.

After determining it would have been impossible for Iraq to import uranium from the world's No. 3 uranium producer, the IAEA looked more closely at the six letters submitted as evidence that Iraq tried to buy two 500-ton shipments of uranium and concluded that all were fakes.