by Norman E. Hooben
Some time ago I reported on the 1.77 metric tons of radiological material removed from Iraq which could be found quite simply by logging on to the
United States Department of Energy's website. It was just a routine
press release back in 2004. But did the mainstream media (MSM) report this to the general public? No!
No matter how hard I tried to convince ordinary people of this find, no one took me seriously! After all, those very same people continued with their vitriolic hate for President Bush because they believed the MSM rather than a friend (me) who has devoted his life in search for the truth.
Now I'm no big fan of George W. Bush for many other reasons which we will not get into here. But one has to give credit where credit is due. Now comes a story that if anything else I have the personal satisfaction of vindication. Will all you disbelievers apologize? Most likely not!
Will Democrats.com apologize for knocking me off their website for posting the July 2004 article? Definitely not! They never did like anything that resembles the truth...and that's a FACT! Will I now get some credibility from friends, family, and strangers? You make the call after you read this: (First the message from an e-mail then the Associated Press article.)
Bush FINALLY vindicated on WMD in Iraq ...
A national defense analyst says President Bush should be commended for keeping quiet about a discovery that could have blown his critics out of the water.
Retired Major General Jerry Curry is a decorated combat veteran who served as an Army aviator, paratrooper, and Ranger during a military career that began during the Korean conflict. He recently wrote about a very under reported story by the Associated Press.
According to the report, a large stockpile of concentrated natural Uranium, known as "yellowcake," reached a Canadian port to complete a top secret U.S. Operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad, and a ship voyage crossing two oceans. The Uranium material had been housed at a former Iraqi nuclear complex 12 miles from Baghdad.
Curry says the president kept mum about the discovery in order to keep terrorists in the dark. "He made a very brave stand, a resolute stand..., in which he decided that he wasn't going to blab everything to the press,"
Curry commends. "...And in the meantime while he kept it quiet, he was buying time from the terrorists to get all that stuff out of the country. So that's what was done -- he just very quietly kept his mouth shut."
"The press beat him to death for the last several years," he continues, "and now it turns out that, yes, there were weapons of mass destruction..."
Curry also maintains that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear program and the material could have been made into a nuclear weapon.
President Bush's actions took courage, he notes, and all Americans should be thankful to have such a brave president who puts the welfare of the American people above personal considerations.
.........................................................................
On July 5, 2008, the Associated Press (AP) released a story titled:
Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq. The opening paragraph is as follows:
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program (a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium) reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
We have been hearing from the far left for more than five years how Bush lied. Somehow, that slogan loses its credibility now that 550 metric tons of Saddam's yellowcake, used for nuclear weapon enrichment, has been discovered and shipped to Canada for its new use as nuclear
energy.
It appears that American troops found the 550 metric tons of uranium in 2003 after invading Iraq. They had to sit on this information and the uranium itself for fear of terrorists attempting to steal it. It was guarded and kept safe by our military in a 23,000-acre site with large
sand burns surrounding the site.
This is vindication for the Bush administration, having been attacked mercilessly by the liberal media and the far-left pundits on the blogo-sphere. Now that it is proven that President Bush did not lie about Saddam's nuclear ambitions, one would think that the mainstream media would report the true story. Once the AP released the story, the main That never happened, due in large part, I believe, to the fact that the mainstream media would have to admit they were wrong about Bush's war motives all along. Thankfully, the AP got it right when it said, "The removal of 550 metric tons of yellowcake, the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment, was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy."
Closing the book on Saddam's nuclear legacy? Did Saddam have a nuclear legacy after all? I thought Bush lied? As it turns out, the people who lied were Joe Wilson and his wife. Valerie Plame engaged in a clear case of nepotism and convinced the CIA to send her husband on a fact finding mission in February 2002, seeking to determine if Saddam Hussein attempted to buy yellowcake from Niger.
The CIA and British intelligence believed Saddam contacted Niger for that purpose but needed proof. During his trip to Niger, Wilson actually interviewed the former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki. Mayaki told Wilson that in June of 1999, an Iraqi delegation expressed interest in "expanding commercial relations" for the purposes of purchasing yellowcake.
Wilson chose to overlook Mahaki's remarks and reported to the CIA that there was no evidence of Hussein wanting to purchase yellow cake from Niger. However, with British intelligence insisting the claim was true, President Bush used that same claim in his State of the Union address in January of 2003. Outraged by Bush's insistence that the claim was true, Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in the summer of 2003 slamming Bush. Wilson did this in spite of the fact that Mayaki said Saddam did try to buy the yellowcake from Niger. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disagreed with Wilson and supported Mayaki's claim. This meant nothing to Wilson who was opposed to the Iraq war and thus had ulterior motives in covering up the prime minister's statements. It was a simple tactic, really. If the far-left and their friends in the media could prove Bush lied about Hussein wanting to purchase yellowcake from Niger, it would undermine President Bush's credibility and give them more cause for asking what other lies he may have told. Yet the real lie came from Wilson, who interpreted his own meaning from the prime minister's statements and concluded all by himself that the claim of Saddam attempting to purchase yellowcake was "unequivocally wrong."
Curiously the CIA sat on this information and did not inform the CIA Director, who sided with Bush on the yellowcake claim. This was made public in a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report in July 2004.
Valerie Plame also engaged in her own lie campaign by spreading the notion that the Bush Administration outed her as a CIA agent. Never mind that it was Richard Armitage - no friend of the Bush administration - who leaked Plame's identity to the press. Never mind that Plame hadnot been in the field as a CIA agent in some six years. The truth is, due to their opposition to the war, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, the mainstream media, and their left-wing friends on the
blogo-sphere engaged in a propaganda campaign to undermine the Bush administration. Now that Saddam's uranium has been made public and is no longer a threat to the world, do you think these aforementioned parties will apologize and admit they were wrong? Don't count on it.
The rest of the American people should hear the truth about Saddam's uranium. It is up to you and me to inform them. As far as the anti-war crowd is concerned, the next time they say thatBush lied, we should tell them to "have the yellowcake and eat it too."
(Note: Yours truly circulated this story from the American Thinker via e-mail some time ago.)
 MSNBC.com |
U.S. removes 'yellowcake' from Iraq
Last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts arrives in Canada
The Associated Press
updated 5:57 p.m. CT, Sat., July. 5, 2008
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.
"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.
Secret missionThe deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.
And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.
Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger — and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims — led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.
"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.
Hurdles ahead of hauling yellowcakeDiplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.
Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.
An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.
But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.
At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers — some leaking or weakened by corrosion — and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.
In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.
On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.
The yellowcake wasn't the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.
Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.
Saddam's stockpile
The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.
Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.
But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive "hot zones" entombed in concrete during Saddam's rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take "many years."
The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.
A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.
A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/
And they want to talk about Sarahʼs wardrobe. Taxpayers, are you out there?
