550 Tons of Some Unknown Material that is Most Definitely, Absolutely, Positively Not Yellowcake Uranium Just Arrived in Canada from Iraq.
Let’s go back in time a bit, to 2003. Remember the infamous “16 words” from the President’s 2003 State of the Union Address? The left seized on the words as a lie and a fable and proof that the President was “cherry picking” intelligence to make the case for a war we wanted all along. The White House certainly did not help itself any by stumbling off the claim like they had been punched in the chest by Mike Tyson even though the Butler Review in Britain and other sources affirmed that his claim did have solid basis in fact. Here’s what he said:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
That’s not such an outrageous statement to have made. In fact, it was so easy to prove that the CIA sent the intelligence equivalent of Inspector Clouseau, Joseph Wilson, to check the story out.
His “investigation” consisted mainly of sitting around drinking sweet mint tea and talking to people who pinky promised that they didn’t know anything about uranium, no way, no how. Now at this point I should say that Niger has the fourth-largest supply of uranium in the world, it is its biggest export, and we knew that it would “sell uranium even to the Devil”. Despite his inept bumbling, he managed to confirm the President’s claim, which must have surprised him so much that he completely forgot what he reported to the CIA. Nevertheless, the consistently-reported narrative is that Iraq never, ever approached anyone in Africa about buying yellowcake uranium. He never had any, because if he had, why that would have violated every single UNSC resolution and it would mean that President Bush was absolutely right about his having a nuclear weapons program.
So, no yellowcake, right?
A Canadian company has purchased more than 500 tonnes of yellowcake uranium, once controlled by the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The Saskatoon-based Cameco Corp., negotiated the purchase from the Iraqi government over the last few months, according to a report from The Associated Press. The government inherited the uranium from Saddam’s now-defunct nuclear program.
That’s an awful lot of non-existent nuclear weapon precursor. Maybe he didn’t want bombs. Maybe he just liked the pretty yellow color or something. It’s probably something we can all ignore. After all, it’s not like he had a multi-billion dollar system of bribes and kickbacks enriching a number of high government officials, businessmen, UN officials, and politicians all working relentlessly to lift the sanctions against him or anything. Says Jeff Goldstein:
Now, before you dull, neocon chickenhawk dupes (whose gullibility encouraged smarter and more discriminating Dem congresspeople to set aside their concerns and their principles and vote us overwhelmingly into a fake war based on the lying lies of lying liars who lied) get to feeling all vindicatey, please note that yellowcake itself — even 550 metric tons of the stuff — is not, without further enrichment, capable of causing anything more than a panic. And Saddam was far too busy writing romance novels and terrorizing Kurds and Marsh Arabs to even dream about further enriching the stuff.
My guess? He was just keeping it around in case Joe Wilson ever lipped off to him. Then he’d be all like, “you’ve been punk’d!”
So, you know, no harm, no foul.
Can we ignore all of this? Oh, yes we can!
Other Posts of Interest:
- More Political Progress in Iraq.
- Meet the “Most Powerful Man in Iraq”. He Isn’t Iraqi.
- The Washington Post Can’t Imagine Why Democrats Oppose a US/Iraq Alliance
Category: Featured, Fighting the Islamists
Jimmie-
The yellowcake in question was the stuff that the inspectors tagged and sealed after the first Gulf War. You're not really implying that we invaded because the stuff was still sitting there where we thought it was after 15 years, right?
The Joe Wilson thing and Bush 16 words are a totally different issue, as it was presented as evidence that Saddam required more yellowcake to reconstitute his nuclear program. No evidence of a purchase or the additional yellowcake was actually found.
In other words, the fact that Saddam still had this stuff sitting in barrels after all these years would lead one to believe that the invasion wasn't necessary, which is why none of the prominent figures on your side are going to take this story and start acting all "vindicated" 'n' everything.
We knew the stuff was there all along. The real news here is that they finally decided what to do with it.
Chen – The President never claimed there was a purchase. The purchase was never, ever the point.
The point was that every day Hussein sat there in violation of the cease-fire and in violation of at least a dozen UNSC resolutions, he was eroding the sanctions that were preventing him from getting all he had up and running again and he was making inquiries into purchasing stuff he was not supposed to have. We've since found that his bribery network was far more advanced than anyone outside of Iraq had ever guess. We've found that his weapons programs could have been brought up to pre-sanction speed almost instantly.
The re-invasion stopped him and permanently dismantled his programs. That's vindication.
Talk about moving the goal posts…
anyway
No its not, when not invading had essentially accomplished the same thing.
Jimmie, the stuff was still sitting there in the same spot, in the same leaky tupperware and everything, untouched. But somehow you're spinning this into "Bush was right about his nuclear weapons program". good grief
I didn't move the goalposts. That's been the administration's argument the whole time, except no one was listening or they, like they did with the "16 words" made up their own argument and said it was the President's.
Do you know why that stuff was still there untouched today? Because Hussein didn't have the chance to touch it. Make no mistake, he certainly would have in a relatively short amount of time. Those sanctions were not long for this world.
I'm saying that you've moved the goal posts because you appear to have shifted your qualification for vindication from claims that he had a nuclear program to the simply erasing possibility that he'd have one at some point in the future.
He did have a program. The yellowcake seems to be proof of that, unless he just like having a big pile of nuclear precursor material.
But it's not new news that he had such a program, is it?
Yea, he did. In the 80's. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the reason we invaded either.
No, he had one a lot later than that. The Dulfer report addressed that. We can argue about how much a program he had, but there's no much of a serious question about whether he had one or not. We know in the late 1990s he was inquiring about buying uranium from Niger, which makes no real sense if he didn't have at least some program.
And, really, how long do you think those barrels of uranium would have stayed where they were once he got the sanctions lifted? He was bold enough to violate the cease-fire for years and to use Oil for Food money to bribe his way out of the sanctions. How long do you think it would have taken for him to break those seals?
Well, I've never seen a good reason why the sanctions and inspections couldn't have worked indefinitely. Its a heck of a lot less costly than a war.
I aqree that it's less costly. It's clear that the sanctions were going to be lifted much sooner rather than later, though. There were a lot of rumblings that were being taken very seriously. As it happens, most of the folks behind the rumblings were getting money and oil from Hussein.
Wow, a blog linking to Goldstein's wacky funhouse maintains the existence of yellowcake (without centrifuge tubes or the facilities to process it) means two things: 1) Bush was right to invade, because apparently Saddam and friends were going to shake that uranium like a martini to process it magically; and 2) counter-intuitively, that Saddam had this stuff to blow up the USA, but was still trying to buy it from Niger.
Either he had and it was being processed or he was attempting to buy new stuff to be unprocessed.
Outside of conservatives living in 2003, what this actually does is highlight how much the "President" lied in the State of Union, as EVERYONE not on the far right, was well aware Saddam already yellowcake he couldn't use and didn't need any more.
I don't fault you, Jimmie for wanting it to be 2003 or 2004. But pace yourself, for the next 15-20 years you will need to bask in the warm glow of your salad days.
timb – The fact that you maintain the President lied in the SotU despite that Joseph Wilson himself proved he did not is enough to disqualify you from intelligent conversation on the topic.
Strange thing then when the White House apologized for including it, George Tenet (in his book) maintained his agency took it out of drafts twice and Condi blames Libby and Addington for lying to her.
Since you don't know that, it might exclude YOU from intelligent conversation on the subject.
Fortunately, you were previously excluded when you posted twice (in less than three days) about what a genius Jeff Goldstein is. Right thinking people on every corner of the globe are aware how big of a tool Goldstein and his impotent rage is. Your lack of discernment with regards to Mr. Jeff might explain how you have internalized Bush's mis-statements and Hannity's lies.