Exclusive: U.S. Finds Radioactive Missiles in Iraq

NewsMax ^ | 3/9/04 | Charles R. Smith

[CholeraJoe]

RFNA is mega-nasty. We had a RFNA tank spring a leak at Vandenberg once. If the wind had been blowing the other direction, we would have had to evacuate the Base Housing.

[rbmillerjr]

bump to save

[dpwiener]

Just exactly why doesn't this count as WMD???

Because it's not a WMD. As other posters have already pointed out, the uranium in question is depleted. It may emit enough radiation to register on a sensitive Geiger counter, but that's about all. The radioactivity wouldn't kill anyone, and it certainly would cause any "mass destruction".

Too many ignorant people get all hysterical over anything which is the slightest bit radioactive, irrespective of the true danger or lack thereof. Let's not encourage such hysteria by deliberately mislabeling things.

Why isn't this leading story on all the news channels?

Because it's not overly newsworthy.

Why don't we see the Dems apologizing to Bush???

In this case they have nothing to apologize for.

Yes, these were just rhetorical questions.

Not really, since the implication in each case is that your answers are wrong.

[dpwiener]

That should read "...it certainly would not cause any mass destruction."

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

A "heavily armored" jet?

The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt.

Mmmmmm....whata plane!

[sport]

Bump

[patriot_wes]

"The missiles appear to be part of a cache of weapons supplied to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War"

Part of the cache they claimed to have destroyed right Blix?

[Blood of Tyrants]

Only the cockpit of the A-10 is armored.

[Blood of Tyrants]

P.S. But still a mighty fine plane. Too bad the AF won't transfer it to the Army. The AF only wants expensive, sexy, high-tech multi gazillion dollar geewhiz stealth gizmos for their primadonna pilots and tries to scrap the old ugly A-10 at every opportunity despite the fact that it has proven outstanding at what it was designed to do. This is because the AF thinks that close air ground support is beneath them, I guess.

[StarCMC]

My thoughts exactly

[PsyOp]

Bio-Chemical Weapons & Saddam: A History.

[genefromjersey]

Sorry folks ! This story promised much and delivered little.

It is written up as if these were "dirty bombs",when they clearly were not that much different from the depleted Uranium stuff we used during the 91 Gulf War.

I'd like nothing better than to see a cache of genuine WMD uncovered,but this story damages our credibility.

[No Blue States]

Bump..

I wonder how many of our enemies Russia is arming, and has. We might need to "look inside their soul" a little closer.

There is nothing the left would agree is a WMD, except Bush.

Its good to get these weapons off the street, and it puts another star on President Bush's resume.

Voting to Defeat democrats will be sweet come November.

[FairOpinion]

The article did NOT say Depleted Uranium. Yes, I suppose it's a possibility, but by no means can we just dismiss them as DU.

They may well be radioactive enough to qualify as "dirty bomb" missiles. Russia did have other such missiles.

Here is an article from the Washington Post (other sources are more detailed, but I know some would dismiss those sources).

Dirty Bomb Warheads Disappear
Stocks of Soviet-Era Arms For Sale on Black Market

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41921-2003Dec6?language=printer


" Military records show that at least 38 Alazan warheads were modified to carry radioactive material, effectively creating the world's first surface-to-surface dirty bomb.

The radioactive warheads are not known to have been used. But now, according to experts and officials, they have disappeared.

The documents, which were provided to The Washington Post, are a series of official letters written in 1994 by a Transdniester civil defense commander, Col. V. Kireev, who apparently became concerned about radiation given off by the rockets.

One document described an inventory of 38 "isotopic radioactive warheads of missiles of the Alazan type," including 24 that were attached to rocket. In the two other documents, the commander requested technical help in dealing with radiation exposure related to storage of the warheads. He complained that uniforms of soldiers working with the warheads were so contaminated that they had to be "destroyed by burning and burying."

"I propose to categorically ban all work with the missile . . . and to label it as a radioactive danger," Kireev wrote on Oct. 24, 1994.

[Dr. Frank fan]

As always with these stories, it's helpful to keep in mind that there are multiple issues here, which do not necessarily all have the same or even related answers:

1. Did intelligence at the time of the war indicate that Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1441 and related resolutions?

2. Was Iraq in violation of UN Resolution 1441 and related resolutions?

3. Did intelligence at the time of the war indicate that Iraq had "WMD" according to some consistent definition of that term?

4. Did Iraq have "WMD" at the time of the war according to that definition?

5. Was it legally justified to invade Iraq?

6. Was it right (all things considered) to invade Iraq?

As near as I can figure, here are the answers as of now.

1. YES. Bush's critics spent a lot of time arguing that he "doesn't have WMD" or that it "wasn't enough" but nobody argued that he wasn't in violation of 1441, just that it wasn't "enough" to warrant war.

2. YES. In point of fact, Hussein's regime was in absolute violation of 1441. This is not even arguable. Even Hans Blix himself proved this by finding a banned drone which had not been declared. BOOM. That placed Iraq in violation, end of story.

3. Probably, but arguable. Yes, it seems like all major intelligence agencies at the time "thought" that Hussein had some kind of "WMD", but lefties are now saying that this or that aspect of the intelligence was trumped-up. Okay, fine. That is possible to some extent or another, of course. Nevertheless all pre-war discussions did tend to take it for granted that Saddam had something, the question was "how much" and "how bad" and what to do about it, so the lefties' complaint along these lines only goes so far. Rightly or wrongly, most tended to believe that Saddam had something.

4. Unknown. We just do not know at this point. Of course by a "weak" definition of "WMD" (like, if a bag of cyanide or the botulism toxin precursor - or whatever it was - if those things count), then the answer is yes. But by "moderate" or "strong" definitions the answer is unknown, and it's also only fair to say there is no positive evidence indicating that he had "WMD". (At the same time it's necessary to remember that this doesn't mean he didn't.)

5. Yes, of course. Congressional resolution gave wide scope to Bush, it's not clear he even had to go to the UN at all.

6. Well, this is where the disagreement really is, isn't it? All these other little arguments about "WMD" and "lies" and "smoking guns" and such are really just little proxy attempts to chip away at one side's position on #6.

In this context I'm not even sure what "smoking gun" is supposed to mean. Who needs it? Help me out, a "smoking gun" is something which would change the answer to #4 from "Unknown" to "Yes", right? And that's it. Big deal! After all,

-It can't change the answers to #1, #2, and #5, because those answers are ALREADY "Yes".

-It can't change the answer to #3 because it is a historical statement, unaffected by later events.

-It can't change the answer to #6 unless there are people out there who believe that the ENTIRE "case for war" (tm) stands or falls with whether we find "WMD" later. Which would be a weird thing to believe, and I'm not sure how much attention ought to be paid to such people, if there are any.

So we're left with #4, a "smoking gun" is something which changes the answer to the question "Did Iraq have "WMD" at the time of the war?" from "Unknown" to "Yes".

I have one last response to this. It is that it's quite possible that Iraq did have "WMD" at the time of the war (according to whatever definition you like), but that there are no "smoking guns" remaining in Iraq to be found. This is related to the equally-true fact that failure to find a "smoking gun" is NOT a reason to believe that #4 is False.

The simple reason for this is as follows: Objects may be moved from one place to another. Whatever these "WMD" are, they are not features of the landscape, but physical objects. Their presence at a place at time T1 does NOT mean they will be present at the same place, at some later time T2. Conversely, their absence at time T2 does NOT prove that they were absent at time T1.

Objects can be moved from one place to another. Remember that.

Of course, the entire above discussion changes significantly if you believe, as many leftists apparently do or pretend to, that objects CANNOT be moved from one place to another. According to that belief, if we haven't found a "smoking gun" (after looking in all places thought to contain them), this is proof that #4 is False. In other words, from the lefty point of view a "smoking gun" is something which would change #4 not from "Unknown" to "True" but from "False" to "True".

What that means is that this whole "smoking gun" thing is far more crucial to the anti-war side than to the pro-war side. There is little reason for pro-war types to fuss too much over whether there's been a "smoking gun" in the first place, because the only effect will be to change #4 from "Unknown" to "True". #1, #2, #3, and #5 will all remain just as True as ever, regardless of whether or not a "smoking gun" is ever found.

I've no idea why I chose this particular thread to type this all up but I had to get it out sometime. Perhaps I'll cut 'n paste it to all future such threads.....

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

NewsMax again....ho hum

That's because NewsMax is doing Big Media's work.

[JasonC]

"Specific survivability features include titanium armor plated cockpit, redundant flight control system separated by fuel tanks, manual reversion mode for flight controls, foam filled fuel tanks, ballistic foam void fillers, and a redundant primary structure providing “get home” capability after being hit."

[JasonC]

If you are superstitious I suppose. Me, I wouldn't give a darn.

[ApplegateRanch]

If it isn't a smoking gun, could we at least consider it a flaming arrow?

[dpwiener]

The article did NOT say Depleted Uranium. Yes, I suppose it's a possibility, but by no means can we just dismiss them as DU.

The article didn't say DU because this is NewsMax, and depleted uranium would not have made for a sensational enough story. There's zero chance that the material is enriched uranium, since what would be the point of putting a sub-critical mass of such an enormously expensive material in a tiny air-to-air missile? I suppose it could be natural uranium, but why waste natural uranium which the Russians could have processed for the U-235? So that leaves DU. Nothing else makes much sense.

In the absence of something substantial to the contrary, it's not a WMD and it's not big news. NewsMax is trying to puff up their "scoop" into something much more than it really is.