Posted on 05/09/2006 4:15:24 AM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
The documents recovered in the wake of the liberation of Iraq didn't just prove connections to terrorist groups. They are also showing how Saddam Hussein was looking for weapons of mass destruction. These documents, widely ignored by the mainstream media, tend to back up the reasons for taking out Saddam's regime in the first place. Some of these documents are being translated by a blogger who goes by alias jveritas.
Prior to the document release by the U.S. government, two documents were provided to Cybercast News Service in 2004. These documents showed efforts to acquire mustard gas and anthrax. These contracts were apparently issued in 1999 and 2000, after Operation Desert Fox.
The first such document is CMPC-2004-004404 (can be viewed via Google), which concerns aluminum tubing. The media focused on the Iraq Study Group's claim that the tubing was used for an 81-millimeter rocket. However, this document points out that the purchase of 50,000 tubes was a matter of concern to Saddam Hussein and the Deputy Prime Minister. This is an unusual level of interest for conventional rockets.
The next document in this regard is CMPC-2004-000167, which discusses a simulation reactor. What is critical about this document is that it shows what Saddam was doing when the inspectors were away. It also shows that when they returned, the regime ceased work – and tried to hide what it was up to.
A third document, ISGZ-2004-007589, discusses concealment efforts for various programs. This undated document shows that Saddam's regime had no intention of complying with the UN resolutions. It also shows that the intelligence that was acquired could have been off – because of ongoing deception operations by Saddam's regime.
Finally, there is document CMPC-2003-016083, which discusses the development of nerve gas detectors. This was one of the things Saddam was prohibited from having – not to leave Iraq defenseless, but to deter Iraq from using chemical weapons in an offensive capability. Nerve gas detectors can tell whether or not a gas attack is blowing back on the troops who launched it, and by adding this level of uncertainty to any attack, it was thought Saddam would be less likely to develop and use chemical weapons.
One thing is clear from these documents: Saddam Hussein was clearly attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction. With the collapse of the UN sanctions and the corruption of the oil-for-food program, it was only a matter of time before Saddam acquired these weapons.
The nuclear scientists at the DOE considered the tubes unsuitable for uranium enrichment. What convinces you that the DOE was wrong and the CIA was right?
Saddam's Ignored Documents of Death
Release/Translation of Classified PreWar Docs ping. If you want to be added or removed to the ping list, please Freepmail me.
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Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents
Duly noted, and thanx for the ping.
Thanks for the ping. Interesting, I wonder if jveritas will start contacting him about new developements to help get the word out on his blog.
I think I will contact him.
That's good, it was just a thought but every little bit helps. Your work has to get out to many more people. :-)
Thanks for that excellent link....another well written Blog...
Have you got a source for that ?
Washington post article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A39500-2003Aug9
""""" But the government's centrifuge scientists -- at the Energy Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and its sister institutions -- unanimously regarded this possibility as implausible.
In late 2001, experts at Oak Ridge asked an alumnus, Houston G. Wood III, to review the controversy. Wood, founder of the Oak Ridge centrifuge physics department, is widely acknowledged to be among the most eminent living experts.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Wood said in an interview that "it would have been extremely difficult to make these tubes into centrifuges. It stretches the imagination to come up with a way. I do not know any real centrifuge experts that feel differently. """""
The behind-the-scenes wrangling over the purpose of the aluminum tubes is also covered pretty thoroughly in this article in the New York Times (posted here at a lefty site, but it's better than having to register with the NYT):
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100304A.shtml
Also this one that I just googled up. It's a lefty site, too, but it looks pretty well documented:
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/006070.php
Bottom line is that the DOE and the State Department were *very* skeptical of the CIA's claim that the tubes were for uranium enrichment, and it looks to me like they had some pretty good reasons for being skeptical.
I am not nearly convinced of that based, in part on what the analysts themselves said.
There is only 1 sentence in the article that disputes that the tubes could be used for centrifuges....
Simply put, the analysis concluded that the tubes were the wrong size - too narrow, too heavy, too long - to be of much practical use in a centrifuge.
The length they gave was 900 millimeters. That is only about 3 feet.
Back to the article...
The American centrifuges loomed 40 feet high,
They said the aluminum tubes in Iraq were too long??? 3 feet is longer than 40 feet?
They also said the tubes were too heavy. What is lighter weight than aluminum?
When asked what the tubes were for, they took weeks to answer, then came up with rockets. Have you ever heard of dual use? They could only be used for 1 purpose?
Also, the report they based all of this on was dated May, 2001. Clinton's people were in place (in DOE) that early after the inaugeration of President Bush.
Even so, it *is* possible that the Iraqis planned on using the tubes for uranium enrichment and were just being real sneaky about it, as the CIA claimed. The problem is that the administration never acknowledged that there was an expert counterargument to that claim. Had the WMD's been found, then it would have been a non-issue, but as things stand now, the Democrats are sure to cite this as evidence that the administration was dishonest about the prewar intelligence. If the 2006 elections go their way, this will be part of the Democrat case for impeachment against President Bush.
I'm just saying that it's unwise to get cocky and dismiss the Democrats' case for impeachment as totally devoid of content. Unfortunately the do have some cards they can play.
Your items 1, 3 and 4 do not prove that the aluminum tubes could not have been for centrifuges.
Item 5 asks about the anodizing. Anodizing does prevent corrosion, but why would they only anodize the inside when the outside is the most suseptible to corrosion?
Item 4 I do not know about, but again, proving that there could be dual use, or that something is older that what is available today, does not dispute whether the tubes could have been used for centrifuges.
One other item I would like to bring up. The DOE was not always responsible for Nukes. Before Clinton, the DOD was. Also, the facilities that are responsible for our nuke info are all run by liberal universities. You can thank Clinton for that one also.
"Regarding your point about 3ft versus 40ft -- I don't see any evidence that the heigth of a centrifuge is determined by the length of the tubes. My guess is that one centrifuge unit actually consists of a stack of centrifuges, kind of like a stack of pancakes, so that tube length determines the diameter of the thing rather than its height"
The article gives all three dimensions..."were 900 millimeters in length, with a diameter of 81 millimeters and walls 3.3 millimeters thick." The diameter is 81mm which is approx 3 15/32 inches.
"Furthermore, a forty foot tube would be unusably floppy at the speeds centrifuges turn at."
Great theory. You just said that our centrifuges don't work. Why don't you comment on Iraq's centrifuges instead?
As I've said, it's possible they were for centrifuges. The DOE's considered this possility "credible but unlikely, and a rocket production is the much more likely end use for these tubes." At this point, the issue hasn't been *proven* one way or the other, and probably never will be (unless jveritas comes across a revealing document). What's important is that the nuclear experts at the DOE -- guys who know the uranium enrichment process inside and out -- considered the administration's claims (which were based on the CIA's opinions) about the tubes to be much more weakly founded than they were expressing to the public.
The CIA said that the alloy used in the tubes was unsuitable for rocket tubes. But the DOE pointed out that there were rocket designs that used that very alloy.
The CIA claimed that the dimensions of the tubes matched those of an existing centrifuge design. But the DOE pointed out that the dimensions in fact didn't match.
The DOE went on to point out that the tubes were anodized (and it was both surfaces, inside and out), which would have made the tubes unsuitable for use with uranium gas.
The DOE also pointed out that the centrifuge design from the 1950's (which the Iraqi aluminum tubes allegedly matched spec with) was meant for single-unit laboratory use, not for use in a cascade to produce the quanities required for nuclear weaponry.
Furthermore, according to the NYT article the inspection teams in Iraq (I can't remember if these were pre or post war) found crates of 81mm rocket tips and 81mm rocket motor assemblies sitting in the warehouses ready to be matched up with 81mm aluminum tubes of precisely the type the Iraqis had ordered.
Now it is possible that in spite of this, the Iraqis were being sneaky and were planning on using them as the CIA claimed. We know that Saddam was sneaky like that. But the point is that there were strong arguments in favor of concluding otherwise. And remember, the administration was leaning very heavily on the aluminum tubes issue in its case for war, since it was one of the administration's only pieces of direct evidence to back up its claims about Iraq's nuclear plans. On such a critical point one would prefer that there be something like a consensus among the experts. But in fact there was major disagreement among the experts -- in fact, one of the articles quotes an official as saying it was a "holy war". In spite of this, the administration decided not to acknowledge the disagreement in its public communications about the aluminum tubes.
Now, the political upshot of this -- now that no WMD's were found, no significant nuclear program was found, and the public is tired of the war -- is that the Democrats have an opening to claim that the administration was selective in its use of the intelligence. The Dem's ability to land this punch has is completely independent of the actual end use of the aluminum tubes. At this point we'll probably never know. Instead the issue is how the administration handled the intelligence. Unfortunately, it can't be denied that it chose not to acknowledge the counterarguments of the nuclear experts at the DOE. That's the crack that the Dems are going to stick their wedge into if the get the chance.
On your point about the 40' centrifuge length -- you're right, I'm wrong.
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