[oceanview]

I do not know the date - it must have been before Saddam tossed out the last round of UN people.

its akin to catching and punishing your child for smoking. you search his room on Monday and find cigarretes, instead of removing them, you place them "under seal" in his room and warn him that if you find more or if he breaks the seal, that will mean he is branded as "a smoker" and you will punish him. You search his room again on Friday, and don't find any new packs except the one you placed under seal from Monday. the left concludes from this - "your son is not a smoker". Really, then what the hell was he doing with the pack you found on Monday?

The comments from Lieberman today (there is a thread) spell it out well - Saddam certainly demonstrated to the world that he had a WMD program - these issues of nuclear seals and "no stockpiles" aside.

[hawkaw]

Well said!

[Eagle of Liberty]

I guess what I am getting at is this. Were these tons of uranium known to be in country in 1998? If so, why didn't Clinton destroy the site during his extended bombing campaign in 1998-1999?

And were these tons of uranium claimed in the report given to the UN? If so, why didn't the IAEA take them?

Found a cool link: http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm#04

[Eagle of Liberty]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3009082.stm

This whole thing stinks. The IAEA supposedly tagged 500 tons of uranium, 1.8 tons were enriched to a low level. This uranium was stolen from Tuwaitha, the uranium dumped out and the barrels sold and used for drinking water? And we only found at the time of the report 100 of 3000 barrels? How do we know this was all tagged uranium? And again, why didn't the IAEA take out the uranium when we had inspectors in there before the war? So many questions.

If nothing else, it shows sloppy work with little oversight and provides evidence for an organization which really doesn't care so much about who has what.