Saddam's 500-ton Uranium Stockpile

Thanks to Leakgate Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's decision to indict "Scooter" Libby last week, Bush administration accuser Joe Wilson is once again the toast of Washington, D.C. - recycling the fifteen minutes of fame he first purchased in July 2003 with the claim that Bush lied about Iraq's plan to acquire uranium from Niger.

Why was Bush's uranium claim so important? Because if true, the mere attempt by the Iraqi dictator to acquire uranium would show that he had clear and incontrovertible plans to restart his nuclear program.

Maybe that's why the press seldom discusses the fact that Saddam already had a staggering large stockpile of uranium - 500 tons, to be exact.

And if his mere intention to acquire uranium was enough to justify fears of Saddam's nuclear ambition, what would the average person deduce from that fact that he'd already stockpiled a huge quantity of the bombmaking fuel?

In its May 22, 2004 edition, the New York Times confirmed a myriad of reports on Saddam's nuclear fuel stockpile - and revealed a chilling detail unknown to weapons inspectors before the war: that Saddam had begun to partially enrich his uranium stash.

"The repository, at Tuwaitha, a centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, . . . . holds more than 500 tons of uranium . . . . Some 1.8 tons is classified as low-enriched uranium."

Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times that "the low-enriched version could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions.

"A country like Iran," Mr. Cochran said, "could convert that into weapons-grade material with a lot fewer centrifuges than would be required with natural uranium."

The paper conceded that while Saddam's nearly 2 tons of partially enriched uranium was "a more potent form" of the nuclear fuel, it was "still not sufficient for a weapon."

Consulted about the low-enriched uranium discovery, however, Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press that if it was of the 3 percent to 5 percent level of enrichment common in fuel for commercial power reactors, the 1.8 tons could be used to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb.

Luckily, Iraq didn't have even the small number of centrifuges necessary to get the job done.

The physicist tapped by Saddam to run his centrifuge program says that after the first Gulf War, the program was largely dismantled. But it wasn't destroyed.

In fact, according to what he wrote in his 2004 book, "The Bomb in My Garden," Dr. Mahdi Obeidi told U.S. interrogators: "Saddam kept funding the IAEC [Iraq Atomic Energy Commission] from 1991 ... until the war in 2003."

"I was developing the centrifuge for the weapons" right through 1997, he revealed.

And after that, Dr. Obeidi said, Saddam ordered him under penalty of death to keep the technology available to resume Iraq's nuke program at a moment's notice.

Dr. Obeidi said he buried "the full set of blueprints, designs - everything to restart the centrifuge program - along with some critical components of the centrifuge" under the garden of his Baghdad home.

"I had to maintain the program to the bitter end," he explained. All the while the Iraqi physicist was aware that he held the key to Saddam's continuing nuclear ambitions.

"The centrifuge is the single most dangerous piece of nuclear technology," Dr. Obeidi said in his book. "With advances in centrifuge technology, it is now possible to conceal a uranium enrichment program inside a single warehouse."

Consider: 500 tons of yellowcake stored at Saddam's old nuclear weapons plant, where he'd managed to partially enrich 1.8 tons. And the equipment and blueprints that could enrich enough uranium to make a bomb stored away for safekeeping. And all of it at the Iraqi dictator's disposal.

If the average American were aware of these undisputed facts, the debate over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would have been decided long ago - in President Bush's favor.

One more detail that Mr. Wilson and his media backers don't like to discuss: the reason Niger was such a likely candidate for Saddam's uranium shopping spree.

Responding to the firestorm that erupted after Wilson's July 2003 column, Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters:

"In case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger."

This is an interesting find from 1998..an article from the NYT..funny how they were on Clintoon's side when it came to Iraq but not President Bush's..(rolling eyes)

NEW YORK -- Last month in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors thought they were closing in on a long-sought prize: computer hard drives that contained the records of Iraq's entire program of weapons of mass destruction, the program at the center of the current standoff.

But the Iraqis stalled for 20 minutes, as inspectors watched from a distance while the old hard drives were whisked away and replaced with new ones. When the inspectors finally got permission to enter, the equipment ran only computer games.

Meeting with New York Times editors and reporters on Monday, Richard Butler, who heads the U.N. weapons inspection commission, cited this incident as one of several cat-and-mouse games that have convinced him that Iraq is determined to hide evidence that it has biological and chemical weapons.

Butler confirmed earlier reports that his team had evidence that Iraq has loaded biological weapons onto missile warheads. He also discussed a range of options that the U.N. Security Council could consider short of a military strike. They could include extending the no-fly zone currently in force over northern Iraq and sealing off the Iraqi port of Basra to end a contraband trade in oil that he estimated brings Iraq hundreds of millions of dollars a month.

In the meeting on Monday, Butler left little doubt that he had reached the end of his rope with the Iraqis, who, he said, "have never cooperated fully in the disarmament process."

"They've never given us an honest declaration," Butler said. "The declarations have always been incomplete."

Butler said that the biological weapons were loaded onto missiles that could be put on mobile launchers and driven away to avoid being hit by bombs. While he did not specify the nature of the evidence or exactly how the team obtained it, he said Iraqis had enough biological material like anthrax or botulin toxin to "blow away Tel Aviv" and that some of the missiles "were very crude, but they work." He also said the team did not know how many missile systems the Iraqis had.

As a result of his trip to Iraq last week, Butler said, he believes Iraq will not back off its refusal to allow inspectors access to sensitive sites. The Security Council is to meet this week to decide its next steps. The United States and Britain have been pressing for military action, but Butler said he expected that in such a case he would receive enough notice to withdraw the 150 inspectors and other workers now stationed in Iraq.

Butler described U.N. weapons inspectors stymied in their efforts to ferret out evidence hidden in vast presidential sites that include ornate palaces and dozens of other buildings, some used to house Saddam Hussein's security apparatus.

Once, he said, Iraqi officials burned documents in full view of the inspectors waiting to be let in and dumped the ashes in the Tigris River. When inspectors appeared at another site, Butler said: "We saw them carrying suitcases through a garden wall."

He also said Iraqi security officials had a drill in which they practiced cleansing a site of documents in 15 minutes or less.

The U.N. inspectors are monitoring more than 100 sites opened by the Iraqis, using surveillance cameras and what Butler described as visits to "sniff the air and test the soil" by collecting samples for analysis.

When Butler was in Baghdad last week seeking unrestricted access to other sites, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz identified eight complexes containing Saddam's palaces and other buildings. Those buildings were closed on grounds that inspecting them would offend national "dignity." When Butler proposed that foreign diplomats provide a face-saving escort for inspectors entering the presidential palaces, he said, Aziz "basically said, 'Get lost.' "

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company

Newsmax first posted this story on Oct 8th of 2004, but it's good that they bring it up now. The fact is that while it was ignored by the MSM last year that "500 ton" cache is playing huge now.

In actuality the HE uranium was put through isotrophic dilution, although one could not absolutely verify that through porous IAEA records.

Wilson's '99 trip to Niger - referenced as a fact finding mission on uranium not related to Iraq, is now getting some media scrutiny as it fits conveniently with other facts we know about the Plame Game. More and more Wilson is looking like the point man on several 'deals" between Niger and other rogue countries via Iraq up until the Gulf war.

Seems lots of people were making a 'buck or two' on this 'business', and it makes all the attacks on the Bush Administration (who killed the Golden Goose) make more sense.

"I have read other bits of compelling data that prove Saddam never let go of his Nuclear/Bio/Chem weapons ambitions, but for some reason this administration does not bring these to the forefront. I believe that the President wants to respect the integrity of ongoing investigations that is why we don't see more made of our gains in the war on terror or what we know to be true about Saddam's weapons programs. However, I think it is time for the President to flip the script, because by not doing so, he will be hurting the party in '06 and '08."

It is not only the President who seems unwilling to state the many pieces of damning information that would badly damage the Dem/liberal position. It is difficult to find any GOP heavyweight willing to do do actual battle. This is what happens when the party is dominated by "neo"-cons, "meso"-cons, or even compassionate-cons, instead of just plain old conservatives.

It is not only the President who seems unwilling to state the many pieces of damning information that would badly damage the Dem/liberal position. It is difficult to find any GOP heavyweight willing to do do actual battle. This is what happens when the party is dominated by "neo"-cons, "meso"-cons, or even compassionate-cons, instead of just plain old conservatives

That is nonsense in its entirety.

The Dem/liberal "position" is that of lies and weakness. This will be met, and is being met, by a multitude of responses and sources both within and out of the Administration.

One of those is bloggers - most of whom are not concerned with puffing themselves and being in effect a fifth column, but in defeating a political party that has, now, become traitorous to this nation in time of war.

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