I didn't want to blog on this because I figured every blogger and every cable channel and every network and ever newspaper would be flaming with this news.
I keep waiting for this to be a BREAKING STORY!! and I'm seeing nothing....am I NUTS or isn't THIS HUGE?
HELP! What is going ON?
51 comments:
I think this was yellowcake found during the first Gulf war, so that may be why bloggers are not jumping on it. But I could be wrong. I haven't really read about it.
Debbie Hamilton
Right Truth
ya, Debbie (and happy to have you here!)...apparently it's not new, but doesn't this show there WAS stuff there? They say "Saddam's nuclear program" when our gov't was laughed at for suggesting it was there! This article deals with how it was finally moved (some's gone missing in the delay, that's a story, huh?)...
MY POINT is:
It was supposedly never there. "NO WMD'S" Even if this was before sanctions, IT WAS THERE. What part of that does our Left not get?
I'm open to a lefty here contributing some info...fire away. I want to learn. I'd have thought this story should be HUGE and it isn't.
I think there must be a missing link that explains all of this and why it's no big news story...help!
Z, I agree with you and Debbie. And we all know how the darn left would never want it out that was "right"!
LOL-i AM SO OUT OF IT TODAY. LOL!
I was saying that the left would never want to know that BUSH was right!
Z,
I did just hear Brit Hume on Fox News mention this story. So, it got a couple of sentences of notice anyway.
I just saw this and had to immediately post it on my blog as well. Like you, I am completely stumped: where are the Conservatives and their blogs pushing this story and clearly SHOWING The Left that this material DID EXIST?
BZ
the NIE said it
British Intelligence said it
Israel destroyed Saddam's first attempt at a nuclear power plant
all pre OIF
Whew..I swear I was doubting my own sanity there for a while, ya know?
HUGE story. ENORMOUS justification for the war...ENORMOUS vindication for the Bush admin...and
zilch....or a gentleman like Brit Hume says something; very soft spoken.."HEY..did he say..........!?"
ya, but who noticed?
We're living in an alternate reality, aren't we?? WHAT"s going ON?
Huge story, indeed. I spent some of the day on it. But EVERYONE knew Saddam had the MATERIALS (many of which had been acquired from Niger illegally in '81) in place for re-starting his nuke program... which is precisely WHY we went in (to secure & confiscate them).
It's also a non-story, however, because all it did was expose the LIE of the liberal narrative that Bush lied and the Democrats were somehow "tricked" and that there were no "existing" WMD's to be worried about (w/o regard for the immediate FUTURE). For while it's "technically" true that there were no "weaponized" WMD's... few but the most pessimistic people really expected to find any "weaponized" WMD's. It was a "deliberate stretch" of the truth by the media and liberal/ peace establishment to ENSURE mission 'failure' by attacking ONE of the MANY casus belli, and thereby by "proxy", refute ALL of them.
So the yellow-cake story is old news when taken out of context of all the events that lead up to the invasion. We all knew that Saddam had a nuke program that would VERY LIKELY be re-started the moment the inspectors left. In fact, Saddam had already recently ('98 & 99) gone "shopping" for more yellow-cake in Niger as CONFIRMED by Joe Wilson (but completely ignored because of a clumsy 'bill of sale' forgery that could be easily exposed and used to cast doubts as to whether a "real" sale, or shopping trip, had actually occurred). And it would appear that nobody at that point in time had actually "bought" any yellow cake... yet.
Never mind the man behind the curtain Z!!! Didn't you get the memo?! The war is bad, ethanol is a real solution, Obama will save us. CHANGE.....CHANGE.....CHANGE.................
The libbies cherry-picked the WMD cause because it was the easiest to attack AND had been "pushed" a little too hard by the Bush Admin. People think of WMD's as complete "weaponized" nukes, ready to pull the trigger. Nobody really expected to find those... just a "program" for building them in the future which INCLUDED 550 previously known and declared (but largely illegally obtained) tons of yellowcake.
The discovery of the "original" purchase of yellowcake in 1981 is largely what caused the Israeli government to BOMB Iraq's French built nuclear reactor back in '81 as well.
Hi Z,
As you may know, I posted the entire article from American Thinker on this very subject at FPM yesterday. The initial piece of information came from The Associated Press of all places.
Later American Thinker, who further developed the information, "updated" the article and had to admit that ALL of these millions of tons of "yellowcake" were already in Iraq PRIOR to 1991, the year of the First Gulf War.
So we can't say this proves Joe Wilson was a fraud, because it involved material that predated his infamous expedition to Niger.
HOWEVER, that takes NOTHING away from the fact that Saddam had a very obvious intent to make and deploy nuclear weapons.
You'd think SOMEBODY would express a tiny bit of gratitude to President Bush for making absolutely sure that Saddam will NEVER make and NEVER deploy nuclear weapons.
But back to FPM for a second. I posted the story there, as I said, and it was TOTALLY IGNORED as though it just DIDN'T MATTER.
Such massive indifference on the part of fellow conservatives and libertarians is profoundly discouraging.
We'll NEVER win as long as we stay asleep or blandly indifferent.
But then whatever happened to Abel Danger. Remember that? It seemed so promising, and the next thing we knew Curt Weldon, the congressman who brought it to our attention, was suddenly wreathed in scandal. He and his daughter were publicly disgraced on some trumped up charges and Weldon was taken out of Congress.
Our enemies ALWAYS succeed in portraying US as fools or fiends, and they ALWAYS seem to make the charges STICK, while WE get nowhere.
It really IS crazy-making.
~ FreeThinke
550 tons of yellowcake "technically" isn't a fully weaponized nuclear bomb. Just ask a "lawyer". Of course, if the yellow-cake were left alone and intact in the hands of an unsupervised dictator with billions of oil dollars to buy French and Soviet engineers for three years, there's a damn good chance you would find a "real" WMD at the end of that time period.
It's the Ring of Gyge's compact, FT. Nothing can be done about it UNTIL the powers that be knowingly AND willfully kill an innocent in place of a murderer.... that will be the sign for the battle to begin. The breaking of the stone "table of values" and a new "revelation".
Great comments....now, one more question: (yes, I can be QUITE obtuse from time to time)
SO; SHOULD THIS NOT BE A STORY?
I STILL think it should..
FJ's right....the Left would have had to have seen cannons loaded with nuke ingredients inside (see what a technical grasp I have on all of this!? HA!) to finally admit "Gee..DUH...maybe Saddam DID want to use nukes!"
FT, no I hadn't seen you post it at FPM but I appreciated your sending the info to me but it was REALLY crazy making not to see anything in the media, you're right
The stupidity is that we conservatives bring up "300,000 Kurds dead from chemicals..isn't THAT a WMD?" When we COULD bring THIS up.
Or maybe I'm just missing the point again..
Or Papa Frank is DEAD ON..and we should be scared of whoever that WIZARD behind the curtain IS. REAL scared.
Yes. It IS a story.
BZ
First off, I had to laugh at this from the piece:
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
But more seriously:
Yellow cake findings aren't technically WMD by the IAEA. Nor was the finding of a principle bug spraying agent, in the tons, considered WMD. Nor was the finding of several mustard gas shells, because they said 'well, that's from the first war, so it's not WMD.'
It's all crap to me. Saddam had a WMD program.
What I am about to tell you will get your attention....I knew a nurse who worked at Landstuhl in Germany. She personally treated several US army personnel who were involved in removing key components of WMD and they were exposed to high doses of radiation. She treated six others who were exposed to Lewisite, a known vesicant (blister agent).
Sadly, this wasn't reported by the media. No wonder.
What really makes me wonder about all of this is that the president knows the truth about WMD agents being in Iraq, yet he remains silent and never told the American public.
All I can do is scratch my head and wonder why, because this information would exonerate him and his drive to push the discovery of WMD's in Iraq. Technically, there were WMD's in Iraq, and I will kick any liberal's ass in here if they try to disagree.
And speaking of yellow cake findings possibly tied to Niger, I hope that bitch Valerie Plame and her leftist communist supporting husband traitor rots in hell.
Come on, Steve...tell us, what do you REALLY think about Valerie Plame? (heh heh)!
Listen, I think you're DEAD ON with this...who doesn't REALLY believe Saddam either HAD the stuff or badly wanted it (he'd promised he'd get it, no?)
WHY BUSH SAYS NOTHING IS MY QUESTION...you're so right. I've always wondered.
It's times like these I can be sucked into conspiracy theories...the only theory I'll never swallow is that this country would kill Americans to promote something. Never have, never will..never could.
I think this is more a case of 'keeping quiet on THIS gets us THIS'..
What keeping quiet about PROOF of WMD's, though, escapes me.
NOBODY wanted to listen to that General, remember? was it Gen Sayed or something? HE SAID HE SAW WMD's AND THEY WERE SHIPPED TO SYRIA.
Even now, on conservative shows, the hosts will acquiesce when the lefties they're talking to mention the "FACT that there WERE no WMD'S"
Doesn't that bug you, people? WHY? it almost as if there's some reason........and it just ISN'T that there really WEREN'T ANY.
Conservatives have been playing defense for so long, they've forgotten what OFFENSE is all about...
They seem to think Obama has to already be IN the White House before they can start...
FJ..that's the greatest point on the blogosphere..
Conservatives think Obama needs to be IN to fight him.
WHAT rubbish, and HOW TRUE, that really is the sense one gets. grrrr
So whatever happened to the satellite photos showing Russian transport trucks leaving Iraq into Syria just before the UN WMD inspections? The Ba'ath Party after all, is like one big happy family.
Z,
Just received my daily newsletter from Investor's Business Daily. It's their top story.
www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=300323577877918
My husband and I were talking about this earlier...and it was in did you hear tones...what is up with the media not reporting this? or at least making a big deal about it. amazing. I may have to blog about this too...nice going! I mean geeeeeez! lol:)N
A concrete block isn't weaponized until you hit someone in the head with it.
"But concrete blawks ain't weapons..."
"C'mere lefty."
You're talking about the press and the UN that criticized Bush for putting captured blueprints of Iraq's nuclear bomb designs in a catalog of Saddam's WMD programs available from download from the internet....
...because "they might fall into the wrong hands."
See, Saddam Hussein with oil money, bomb designs, and a foreign intelligence service practically married to every terrorist group under Al Qaeda's umbrella wasn't "the wrong hands."
You can't fix stupid.
well, thanks, everyone...I'm glad I'm not nuts!
Here's the deal, though; If the media (and the White House! WHY?) doesn't want this information out, if a story proving the last 5 years of stories against this administration are basically WRONG isn't HUGE, THEN what?
How can it not matter to Bush?
What is UP??
What ELSE aren't we hearing?
Beamish, we can't fix stupid, but you'd think we could demand to know the truth?
I guess I am naive. Maybe the Right's waiting till a month before the election or something? Who knows.
My money's on something like this:
"Now that we are sure that we have secured all extant Iraqi weapons of mass destruction known to have existed from falling into terrorist hands during our highly classified unrestricted searches for them, we'd like to give John McCain the honor of revealing our necessarily behind-the-scenes work in securing the American people from a serious threat."
Then again, given the 2-week long half life of an Obama policy position, by the time the election rolls around, Obama will be practically trying to talk his supporters into voting for McCain.
Ya, Beamish...and maybe they can add that McCain's been working behind the scenes in all of this!?
re: Obama and half life. You just KILL me. LOL!
Today it's the yellowcake, and tomorrow?
I just happen to know that country pretty well - been around it and saw how Saddam's people worked. They were the true masters of disguise and magic, I have seen them do that.
Remember the fighter airplane which got only detected after the wind blew some sand away and the tail started to pop up? Finding something on that desert (I've been through that, too) is worse a problem than finding that famous needle in the haystack. I am absolutely convinced that what we would be looking for is buried in the Iraqi desert, and the rest is in Syria.
So, stay tuned for further surprises to come up. It's only a question of time.
I am also convinced as most of you that the White House knows more than they would admit. The $5 question is only: Why?
Mr.Z
Kinda throws a spanner in the works of the "Bush Lied...." crowd. They're not big on facts the last time i looked.
Yep, it's huge, Z.
Funny, I've given up on getting any real news from TV. I get my info. from conservative talk and blogs.
FJ had an excellent point about conservatives going on the offense. We've been too nice for too long. The McCain camp should use this story to bolster his position on the war...to make Obama look as wimpy as he really is.
just my .02
Mr. Z,
Your firsthand experiences with the terrain in Iraq makes compelling reading. I wish you would write a book or at least a series of articles on the hard realities of looking for a gold ring once it's been lost in the shifting desert sands.
The Hippopotamus in the Hotel Lobby in this entire affair, however, is the nakedly apparent desire on the part of the Mainstream Media to undermine US policy in the Middle East and paint the United States and all we have done under GWB's administration in the worst possible light.
There's another frustrating phenomenon brought to bear on the situation too. Let me give you an example:
I do maintain friendships with liberals, despite being at loggerheads over politics all the time. Anyway, I confronted one of them with the Article from American Thinker on the tons of "yellowcake" recently found in Iraq and then removed.
His RESPONSE was classic liberal behavior.
"I won't believe any of that isn't just a desperate, last ditch effort to burnish Bush's image before he leaves office, unless and until I see it prominently featured on network TV news and 'responsible' publications such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, [and presumably TruthOut, Buzzflash, Daily KOS, DU, and The Daily Worker].
What can you DO with people who are bound and determined to hold such a mindset?
~ FreeThinke
Should this be a story? Not unless it fits the media's definition of what's OK to print it seems. There's been other stuff that pointed to there being WMDs in Iraq before. I've got the links somewhere. Same thing on those stories...crickets. Unfortunately for the majority of the population, if it doesn't make it to the MSM and get thrashed day after day, it's not real or true.
Since this is no big deal to the libs maybe we should dump this stuff right outside the DNC convention.
WHY BUSH SAYS NOTHING IS MY QUESTION...you're so right.
I'll tell you why...because some of our allies had supplied Saddam...don't want to embarrass them.....
We knew it when we were in Iraq...we heard the stories of caches that were found.
Elbro, if Bush allowing the world to think he's a liar and imperialist and crazy dopy cowboy just so he won't embarrass allies is true, we're in bigger trouble than even I thought...but you could have a point.
Thing is, LOTS of people/countries, did LOTS of bad stuff before we were at war over there; If the Left can CONSTANTLY show pix of Rumsfeld smilingly shaking Saddam's hand (suggesting we were GREAT FRIENDS WITH A DICTATOR, who's only a dictator when THEY want to point it out to make our own guys look bad), can't we say "Ya, France (or whatever country) sold yellow cake to Iraq but that was then..."
Come to think of it...is the 'embarrassing allies' point (which I think is probably valid, but NUTS...how've they helped us in return!?) why the Oil for Food Program has NEVER gone anywhere? that was silenced pretty well, too, wasn't it.
FT...I'd be real surprised if Mr. Z will(can) tell you more than that..sorry! I was surprised he told you that much. And no, he's NOT CIA!!! TRUST ME on that!
oops maybe there was some weapons of mass destruction in iraq, my bad.. yours truly hans blix....
I posted the story there, as I said, and it was TOTALLY IGNORED as though it just DIDN'T MATTER.
Such massive indifference on the part of fellow conservatives and libertarians is profoundly discouraging.
There are a number of stories like that. The recent Senate Select Committee final phase II intell report, chaired by Rockefeller, absolutely partisan. Bush didn't lie. Arguments put forth were "generally substantiated by intelligence". Then there was the Pentagon-funded Iraqi Perspectives Project that examined captured Iraqi documents in the HARMONY Database. Misrepresented the report in the media, but the substance of the report affirms that there were substantial ties between Saddam and al Qaeda network and affiliates. Where's the outrage? I posted extensively. But most conservative blogs remained largely silent.
What really makes me wonder about all of this is that the president knows the truth about WMD agents being in Iraq, yet he remains silent and never told the American public.
All I can do is scratch my head and wonder why, because this information would exonerate him and his drive to push the discovery of WMD's in Iraq.
Steve, White House did initially lay some claims; but eventually, they just decided to "move on" and not fight the MSM narrative, but focus their energy on "today". PR and defending itself has been one of the biggest failings of the Bush Administration. elmers brother also makes another good point.
Curt at FA actually mentioned the 550 tons of yellowcake shipment story last Saturday (email from Mark Eichenlaub). Mark and Scott Malensek have some of the most comprehensive knowledge when it comes to the run up to war, Saddam, why Iraq, al Qaeda ties, and wmd.
Here's what Scott wrote in a comment on this recent story:
btw 550 tons of yellowcake uranium were secretly removed from Iraq last weekend and shipped to Canada where it will be used for peaceful purposes. It had been enriched in Saddam’s Iraq to make bombs, but the IAEA put it in a shed w a padlock and a tag to secure it rather than remove it. Not weapons grade stuff, but the clearest example that he intended to secretly restart his wmd programs and that the 10/2/2002 NIE was correct, if left alone, Saddam could have had a bomb by 2007. Also, this is 550 tons of stuff that coulda been loaded into empty artillery shells or suicide bombs, or backpack bombs to make dirty bombs. A few ounces per bomb=how many bombs from 550 tons?
Yeah yeah, I know….the UN already knew about it (like they knew about lots of WMD according to their 3/6/03 Unresolved Disarmament Issues report just days before the invasion), and they had it “secure” w a padlock and sticker.
Saddam was a tyrannical dictator w ties to Al Queda leadership and operational ties to Al Queda groups as well as a WMD rapid restart (”breakout capability” to quote the ISG report), and he couldn’t be removed peacefully. The invasion was the last resort.
Scott spends his time reading the actual reports that come out (he read all 1600 pages of the Iraqi Perspectives Project when USJFCOM released it.
Check out Flopping Aces categories:
Saddam Documents
WMDs
Iraq-al-Qaeda Connection
Some of the best stuff can be found in comments sections. Check out Regimeofterror.com, also.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080708/ap_on_go_ot/war_powers_study
we're doomed now, anyway.
Thanks guys, great information, but today's info could be the end of America as we know her.
imagine depending on CONGRESS to go to war? Dodd? Biden? Kerry? BOXER?
that's all, folks.
if that links letters and numbers aren't enough (looks like the computer cut something off?) I just posted on the problem I refer to..z
How easy is it to enlist an ally in a war and then at the same time blame them for the cause of it?
hmmmm
Elbro, great point. But, nobody really HELPED us. I'd have brought out the truth guns when everyone dumped us in Iraq by ourselves!
uh... I worked with Spanish, Nepalese, British and Australian military. Maybe you and others weren't satisfied but those and others have helped and continue.
and really the allies I'm speaking about were more involved in Afghanistan than in Iraq
"satisfied"? Anybody who helps is great. I guess I'm thinking more France and Germany, both of which have had their fingers in the till between selling information and oil for food.
And ya...Afghanistan got way more help, didn't it.
The existence of the yellow cake has been known for a couple decades.
It's useless without a sophisticated processing program.
I remember when the right was telling everyone they were shocked to find Hussein just a few months away from a nuclear weapon just after Gulf I. Yeah, he went to war two months short of nuclear capability. It's that sort of reasoning that makes the far right a bit of a giggle.
Ducky....did you READ the whole article? We all acknowledge it's been there for years...
What this article says is a lot more than "it's beeen there"..take the time.
You might want to treat it as Miss Havisham's cake, I don't.
yeah that's two
I remember the good old days, when Clinton was bombing an "aspirin factory" owned by al Qaeda in the Sudan allegedly making sarin gas and manned by Iraqi chemical weapon scientists.
Though Ducky sits at a computer built from parts constructed in different parts of the world, he can't put together the idea that uranium in the hands of a terrorist sponsor can get together with the bomb-making capabilities of another terrorist sponsor and so on....
One step at a time. We're still working on getting Ducky to accept the fact that there's no cherry pie inside the can of Crisco with the cheery pie on the label.
beamish........
you kill me.
Post a Comment