I was having a glass of sweet mint tea with Joe Wilson the other day, and he said that simply wasn't true.

Those water-filled missiles make great practical jokes.

"Hello, Ariel Sharon? We are about to gas Tel Aviv....
- PSYCH!!"

Hey liberals!

I saw this reported on Atlas Shrugs a couple days ago. Along with the nerve agent cyclosarin and 1,500 gallons of chemicals from a lab supposedly built after the war began.

Pisses me off that this never gets wide play in the media but I also blame Bush for not having a press conference every time they find this stuff. FIGHT BACK DAMN IT!

Shit, Bush has been giving pressers for the past month talking about the war. For all we know, he's mentioned it. Most of these speeches have been ignored. The MSM just doing their jobs. At least we have powerlineblog, and Ace.

Maybe... Saddam's capabilities were CONTAINED, as Bush adminstration claimed in early 2001?

Or were they lying then?

Once again, having capability to make weapons does not equal having weapons.

Having weapons does not equal being able to deploy them.

Having weapons does not equal posing a transatlantic threat to the US.

This was part of 200 TONS of yellowcake uranium found at Al-Tuwaitha. NY Times reported on it in May of 2003.

I don't recall the 1.8 tons being highly enriched, "just" low enriched - IOW, it needed another whirl or two through the nonexistant uranium centrifuge.

You mean the centrifuge that was buried in the physicist's garden?

Putting your fingers in your ears and humming does not equal a viable strategy.

You mean the centrifuge that was buried in the physicist's garden?

Oh, c'mon. We all know that thing was to be used expressly for making Shirley Temples and Jello Rainbow desserts, NOT uranium enrichment.

Having weapons does not equal posing a transatlantic threat to the US.

If this were true, then your party should have considered nominating someone other than John F. Kerry. He concluded that Iraq was a threat to the US about a hundred times.

But Bush lied. Right.

"There is no centrifuge behind the garden!"

Here's a link to the NYT article about the Nigerian yellowcake uranium they found but that Iraq did not ever, ever try to buy again:
Shoot, comments wouldn't let my paste the link because it's questionable content?! Anyway around this?

Unfortunately you have to pay to read the entire article. If anyone has a link to a free version, I'd appreciate it.

Ah. Having weapons does not equal posing a threat.

What a surpising and...odd position for a Democrat to espouse. Good to know, though.

I look forward to the Brady Law being repealed any day now.

Phinn,

I'm not talking to the liar upthread, but a nuke from Iraq wouldn't have had to cross an ocean to kill Americans. We had troops in Saudi, Kuwait, southeastern Europe...

Putting your fingers in your ears and humming does not equal a viable strategy.

WHA???

Maybe somebody should let the Democratic Party know this, since it seems to be the foundation upon which their whole foreign policy edifice is built.

We had troops in Saudi, Kuwait, southeastern Europe...

Now Dave, they don't really count, since they're babykillers.

Don't get me wrong, though - I support the troops.

tubino, do you ever feel weird about defending a mass murderer?

The missile would probably have been used on non-Americans, expendables like the Israelis. They would nuke around the Palestinians though. And, yeah, it would be nice to have a missile to reach out into Saudi Arabia or Kuwait to wipe out the 3rd Armored Div./Baby Killer Detachment.

But, why build a missile when you have a nuke. Use one of the tankers from your crony in the oil for palaces program to just ship it anywhere in the world, if you wanted to get a NY or San Diego.

Having weapons does not equal posing a threat.

Hrrrumph.

Then it follows that the US nuclear arsenal poses no threat to anyone. This is excellent news - now we can expand and enhance its capabilities without anyone complaining.

SJK,

Shit the only people he and his really respect are mass murderers, I mean what's not to love about dictators who practiced death camp socialism. You know, you dudes in flyover country would end up looking a lot like the Ukraine if he ever got his way. Farmers never really fit into the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The uranium story is ancient - mention of the transfer occured originally in the local Oak Ridger newspaper as I recall.

Mention of it will also be found in some UN and Greenpeace press releases.

It really doesn't matter where they unleashed a nuke or a dirty bomb. If terrorists exploded a dirty bomb in Jordan and not a single American life was lost does anyone really doubt that we would have been forced to involve ourselves in the matter? The only difference is we would be facing a world in which the use of nuclear devices was now a fact not some abstract concept. The only difference we would be hearing from the left is that Bush was incompetent and how could he have not known this was going to happen with all the evidence.

There is no way the left will ever be pleased with this administration. They preferred the Clinton approach where we basically ignored the threat and when a bomb didn't go off they assumed that his "policy" was working. The same policy they employed in N. Korea with stunningly effective results.

The Clintonian approach to genocide was unique though, "its sorta like genocide in Rawanda, but not close enough."

See how cute I am?
I set impossible parameters for you dummies to justify military action.

Just because a dictator who hates you has a nuclear missile pointed at your country, it doesn't mean he will actually deploy that missile.

Some of you dunces may ask , "Gee, Toob, do we need to wait for the nukular missile to be launched before taking any military action?"

Of course, you stupid rethuglican. Just because a missile has been launched, it doesn't mean it was intended to hit your land, or hit anything at all. The proper response is to get on the phone to the nice dictator man and politely ask him of the intentions of said missile.

Bottom line: The US, no matter what the intel shows, has no right for military action, (especially by a Republican administration, I may change my spin, however, if it were a President Dean, for example).

I don't deal in facts, nor in truth. History of events start and stop where I decide. I am here to spin for my side. I ignore basic ethics while arguing; pretending other facts don't exist. I have no use for intellectual honesty.

Keep replying, and I'll keep lying.

Oh, I know, Dave. I was just pointing out the fact that the Democratic complaint about Bush just seems to change all the time.

Bush lied. Or did he just not investigate enough?

Saddam was not a threat. Or was he not a transatlantic threat?

maybe Saddam was a real, bona fide threat, but the Democrats would have "handled it better."

It's hard to keep up with the propaganda du jour. (Spin that, bitches.)

Was Germany a transatlantic threat when we went into WWI? No. The Democrat Wilson's decision to get us involved in that particular "unnecssary, elective" war was a fuck-up of the first order. It only ushered in a century of totalitarianism, after all.

WOWW!!!
But....

"In April 2003, just days after the statue of Hussein in Baghdad was pulled down, a U.S. Marine engineering company took a close look at Tuwaitha, which is 30 miles south of Baghdad. There they found guards had abandoned their posts and looters were roaming the giant facility. At one storage building, which later was found to hold radioactive samples used in research, the radiation levels were too high to enter safely, although the entrance door stood wide open...
Yeah, saddam sure had his finger on the trigger..
A month later, the Pentagon rejected suggestions that U.N. inspectors be allowed to reenter Iraq but agreed the IAEA experts could return to secure the uranium that had been under its seal for years.

Link

I know Phinn. I'm just tired of the liar repeating "transatlantic threat" as if that's the only kind there is.

and has been pointed out, a nuke on a tanker pulling up to Baytown doesn't require a missile

So what, X?
All that excerpt proves is that the UN weapons inspectors were indeed useless.

joeindc44:
Shit the only people he and his really respect are mass murderers,

There's hope for tubino. I think his dislike of the republicans just clouds his vision.

I mean what's not to love about dictators who practiced death camp socialism. You know, you dudes in flyover country would end up looking a lot like the Ukraine if he ever got his way. Farmers never really fit into the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Well put. But since I live in California, I'd probably just get purged early on.

SJKevin, I also live in California.
They'll have a hard time with the purge, considering all of us who own weapons and know how to use them. But hey, they can purge San Francisco, where handguns are now illegal...
Oh wait, those are the ones who intend to be the purgers, not the purgees!!

Having weapons does not equal being able to deploy them.

No, it's not.

But him having those weapons did constitute a violation of the UN resolutions you liberals seemed so fond of when it wasn't Bush trying to help the UN enforce them.

What are you, the new Baghdad Bob? And doesn't parroting talking points on behalf of a former mass murdering dictator get to you just a little bit?

Probably not, just so long as you can use it agains the REAL enemy, right? That Bushitlerhalliburtonchimpymcstupid.

Fucking liberals.

"You know, you dudes in flyover country would end up looking a lot like the Ukraine if he ever got his way. Farmers never really fit into the dictatorship of the proletariat."

Funny you should say that ... the whole "Retro V. Metro" thing from election time last year pretty much called for that. Pol Pot in reverse, basically.

Some loose shit Ace: The Uranium is not highly enriched, only enriched. In other words it won't go boom.

However, if you put enough of it together it will go critical and start throwing fast neutrons around, which will be absorbed by the U-238 (that's the common uranium) and become (after a couple of beta decays) Plutonium. Plutonium can be separated from the other "special" stuff in spent fuel relatively easily. Which means you have Plutonium for nuclear weapons as well as "special" stuff for a radiological bomb (or ten). All that in the hands of Saddam Hussein is what I call a Bad Fucking Day waiting to happen.

The threat of Saddam possesing nukes or even material for a "dirty nuke" is not that he was going to deploy them via ICBM or bomber (transatlantic threat) because that would have been suicide, we would have known who had attacked us and we would have responded with mass retaliation. The threat of Saddam possesing nukes was that he could funnel these weapons to terrorists (that we knew he has long aided and abetted) . If terrorists were to use the weapons , it would be very difficult to prove that Saddam was involved and we could not justify retaliation against Iraq.

Terrorists organizations such as Al Queda could not function without nations that support them. The states that aid and support these terrorists are hostile to the U.S. and hide their involvement behind terrorist organizations to avoid direct accusation. These states should be considered fair game.

"So what, X?
All that excerpt proves is that the UN weapons inspectors were indeed useless."

Ok, Fart -

The IAEA already knew of and documented the site before the invasion:

"In 1992, after the first Gulf War, all highly enriched uranium – which could be used to make nuclear weapons – was shipped from Iraq to Russia, the IAEA's Zlauvinen said.

After 1992, roughly 2 tons of natural uranium, or yellow cake, some low enriched uranium and some depleted uranium was left at Tuwaitha under IAEA seal and control, he said.

So were radioactive items used for medical, agricultural and industrial purposes, which Iraq was allowed to keep under a 1991 U.N. Security Council resolution, Zlauvinen said.

IAEA inspectors left Iraq just before last year's U.S.-led war. After it ended, Washington barred U.N. weapons inspectors from returning, deploying U.S. teams instead in a so far unsuccessful search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "

Link

Pity that the tinfoil hat brigade beats this old drum. It just leaves themselves open for more scruitiny for what was really the motive for Operation Endless Clusterfuck;

"Until fighting began on March 19, those seals were believed to have remained intact and Tuwaitha's three major storage structures were secured by Iraq's Special Republican Guard. But when a U.S. Marine engineers reached the site on April 6, the Marines found it abandoned. "

Link

What was the coalition busy securing in the early stages of the invasion?

Oil facilities.

Think about it. Would'nt the Bush administration tell the nation that this discovery was vindication for the war?

Did they?

No.

Even if Saddam had had a few nukes and a means of delivering them (ie icbm) he could not have used them because against us fear of mass retaliation.

Saddam had a history of aggression against neighboring states and an ambition for territorial expansion , a hostility for the U.S. and a history of aiding terrorist organizations. Saddam had had WMD at one time or another, was not abiding by U.N sanctions and demonstrated that he was intent on either obtaining WMD's or further WMD's and greater WMD technology as well as the means to deliver them (artillery shells capable of delivering chemical weapons were still in his inventory). Saddam did not pose an imminent threat to deliver WMD to the U.S by means of strategic nuclear warfare ; however he did have the means to provide terrorists organizations with WMD and he had asprations to become a nuclear threat.

Considering Saddam's record of violation of human rights against his own peole and in light of 9/11, there was ample justification to invade Iraq to depose his regime.

"Until fighting began on March 19, those seals were believed to have remained intact and Tuwaitha's three major storage structures were secured by Iraq's Special Republican Guard. But when a U.S. Marine engineers reached the site on April 6, the Marines found it abandoned. "

What was the coalition busy securing in the early stages of the invasion?

Oil facilities.

The fact that there were vast quantities of radioactive material within reach of someone as dangerous as Saddam is frightening.

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Removed Radioactive Materials From Iraq Facility

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 7, 2004; Page A16

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced yesterday that almost two tons of low-enriched uranium and about 1,000 radioactive samples used for research had been removed from Iraq's Tuwaitha Nuclear Center and brought to the United States for security reasons.

The airlift of the radioactive materials was completed June 23, Abraham said in a statement, "to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists." Less sensitive radiological materials -- used for medical, agricultural or industrial purposes -- were left in Iraq, according to a Department of Energy statement.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which in the prewar period had kept the Tuwaitha uranium under seal, was told in advance of the U.S. removal, as were Iraqi officials.

Tuwaitha was once the center of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons effort, but its equipment was dismantled at the direction of U.N. inspectors in the early 1990s as part of the agreement following Iraq's surrender in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The U.N. inspectors removed highly enriched uranium that could be used for weapons and shipped it for storage in Russia. The low-enriched uranium was placed under seal in storage at Tuwaitha but under the control of the IAEA.

Before the U.S.-led coalition's invasion of Iraq, as the Bush administration alleged that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program, Tuwaitha was a target for U.S. intelligence.

In April 2003, just days after the statue of Hussein in Baghdad was pulled down, a U.S. Marine engineering company took a close look at Tuwaitha, which is 30 miles south of Baghdad. There they found guards had abandoned their posts and looters were roaming the giant facility. At one storage building, which later was found to hold radioactive samples used in research, the radiation levels were too high to enter safely, although the entrance door stood wide open.

A month later, the Pentagon rejected suggestions that U.N. inspectors be allowed to reenter Iraq but agreed the IAEA experts could return to secure the uranium that had been under its seal for years.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company