Nope, there was no Iraqi nuclear weapons program under Saddam....

... or was there? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/ It appears Saddam owned quite a bit of the 'yellowcake' uranuiun that everybody pshawed. Now it belongs to Canada.

Jensenman wrote: Now it belongs to Canada.

We're setting them up! We need more maple syrup, Tim's, real beer, and cheap prescriptions.

This is the real reason for the talk of a faster Iraq pullout.

fastEddie wrote: We're setting them up! We need more maple syrup, Tim's, real beer, and cheap prescriptions.

Bring it on.

Bring friends.

And mukluks.

Quite interesting. Although the "pshawing" was mostly about the claims that Saddam was reengaging a nuclear program, and attempting to acquire more Uranium from Niger. Apparently, that was not the case, according to this article:

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

Salanis is right, the just-removed yellowcake was acquired much earlier.

For those of us who forget the huge security concerns immediately following 9/11, or those choosing a hindsight perspective, here's an article that helps explain just why the decision was made to invade Iraq and depose Saddam:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121504452359324921.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Mmmmm Yellow Cake..

Does it come with buttercream frosting?

No one has ever particularly doubted the nut was trying, just some of us really doubted his ability to do it. Still do. I've yet to see anything that shows he had succeeded, or even simply came half-way close.

Ya know, he may never have developed nukes. But back to hindsight again: how could the Prez have known for sure? I rather prefer the current scenario to the possibility that Saddam could have produced a nuke, even a crude one, that could have been brought into, say, New York harbor in a shipping container.

Another possible side benefit: that nutjob Kim Il Jong in North Korea may have finally seen the light after Iraq was invaded, which would explain why the nuke plant was demolished recently.

No that just means the newer bigger 118 cascade unit will be online in "Glowing Mountain". They are putting condos up where the old facility was at.

ignorant wrote: Mmmmm Yellow Cake.. Does it come with buttercream frosting?

Supposedly it's more like cornmeal. I guess you could top it with cheese or honey. Oh, and of course bacon or whipped cream.

Everyone talks about how Hussein was harboring and sponsoring terrorist groups. I've never heard who any of these groups were. I'm very interested in knowing who he was or was not harboring/equipping/funding/etc. I'm not saying this to be sarcastic or contrary (well, I am a bit skeptical); but many of the claims of the urgency for invading Iraq hinge on the threat of Saddam arming terrorists, and I haven't been shown any evidence of who that supposedly was.

Much of the need to go back into Iraq hinged on the fact that we were technically still at war with them, when they violated 14 UN resolutions, shot at our planes, and were massing to re-invade Kuwait (the original invasion of Kuwait being the reason we were at war with them originally). Advisors to the President were convinced that the 9/11 attacks and our response in Afghanistan were causing a disruption that Saddam would use to restart hostilities not only with the troops we had there, but neighboring nations, like Kuwait. So we simply stopped the cease-fire we were in with Iraq and went back to war.

As for Saddam and terrorists...

Saddam never gave a speech in which he threatened to, for example, send the Iraqi navy and army to conduct an amphibious invasion of Florida. But although Saddam never threatened the territorial integrity of America, he repeatedly threatened Americans. For example, on November 15, 1997, the main propaganda organ for the Saddam regime, the newspaper Babel (which was run by Saddam Hussein's son Uday) ordered: "American and British interests, embassies, and naval ships in the Arab region should be the targets of military operations and commando attacks by Arab political forces." (Stephen Hayes, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 94.) On November 25, 2000, Saddam declared in a televised speech, "The Arab people have not so far fulfilled their duties. They are called upon to target U.S. and Zionist interests everywhere and target those who protect these interests."

On the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, a weekly newspaper owned by Uday Hussein said that Arabs should "use all means-and they are numerous-against the aggressors...and considering everything American as a military target, including embassies, installations, and American companies, and to create suicide/martyr [fidaiyoon] squads to attack American military and naval bases inside and outside the region, and mine the waterways to prevent the movement of war ships..."

Iraqi intelligence documents from 1992 list Osama bin Laden as an Iraqi intelligence asset. Numerous sources have reported a 1993 nonaggression pact between Iraq and al Qaeda. The former deputy director of Iraqi intelligence now in U.S. custody says that bin Laden asked the Iraqi regime for arms and training in a face-to-face meeting in 1994. Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Hajer al Iraqi met with Iraqi intelligence officials in 1995. The National Security Agency intercepted telephone conversations between al Qaeda-supported Sudanese military officials and the head of Iraq's chemical weapons program in 1996. Al Qaeda sent Abu Abdallah al Iraqi to Iraq for help with weapons of mass destruction in 1997. An indictment from the Clinton-era Justice Department cited Iraqi assistance on al Qaeda "weapons development" in 1998. A senior Clinton administration counterterrorism official told the Washington Post that the U.S. government was "sure" Iraq had supported al Qaeda chemical weapons programs in 1999. An Iraqi working closely with the Iraqi embassy in Kuala Lumpur was photographed with September 11 hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar en route to a planning meeting for the bombing of the USS Cole and the September 11 attacks in 2000. Satellite photographs showed al Qaeda members in 2001 traveling en masse to a compound in northern Iraq financed, in part, by the Iraqi regime. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, senior al Qaeda associate, operated openly in Baghdad and received medical attention at a regime-supported hospital in 2002. Documents discovered in postwar Iraq in 2003 reveal that Saddam's regime harbored and supported Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi who mixed the chemicals for the 1993 World Trade Center attack...

Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. Iraq listed Bin Laden as an intelligence asst.

Dunno. Seems like even Clinton's advisors knew of a connection.

Sources?

Hi Salanis,

I don’t think there are more than a handful of people that really know what was & wasn’t going on. Just because no evidence was produced for the world’s inspection / consideration doesn’t mean anything…secrets are frequently kept as a bargaining chip.

From what I see, taking out Saddam was a mistake but again, I don’t think I’m seeing hardly anything. Bottom line, Saddam was a huge E36 M3 head in terms of complying with his agreements for UN inspection so technically, he had it coming to him either way.

Between fuel prices and the lending meltdown, this is a very opportune time for someone to make trouble…I consider the fact that Iran, et al haven’t done anything outrageous yet as a strong indication that there’s a whole lot of stuff going on behind the scenes.

Most of the rats left the sinking ship when it became evident that an invasion was inevitable. One notable rat, Abu Abbas, did NOT escape: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/16/iraq/main549591.shtml

Nice guy. He and his underlings hijacked a ship, then they shot and killed a wheelchair bound crippled Jewish guy, then they threw his body off the ship.

Re: Original Post

The yellowcake was leftover from Iraq's nuke program from the 80's during the Iraq/Iran war. Everybody knew about it. In fact, that's the reason why Iran began its own nuke program in response. Iraq's facilities were dismantled years before 9/11 and subsequent claims of WMD's.

Yeah, and thanks to the UN constraints placed on coalition forces at the end of the first Gulf War, Saddam was allowed to keep this stuff. Which most certainly can be refined into weapons grade uranium, in fact that's what powered Fat Man and Little Boy. There was no reason Saddam couldn't have started the program up again but just better hidden.

Yet another reason I don't like when the UN gets involved in ANYTHING.

nderwater wrote: The yellowcake was leftover from Iraq's nuke program from the 80's during the Iraq/Iran war. Everybody knew about it. In fact, that's the reason why Iran began its own nuke program in response. Iraq's facilities were dismantled years before 9/11 and subsequent claims of WMD's.

The article actually discussed that about the vintage of the Uranium. It also mentioned how yellow-cake is of very limited usability.

While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" — a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material — it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.

It also sounds like much of the uranium in question wasn't being stored for later use, but just kind of entombed like nuclear waste.

But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive "hot zones" entombed in concrete during Saddam's rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take "many years."

You folks should try reading something other than MSNBC. No offense. Like the 9/11 Commission Report, or Imperial Hubris (anything by Michael Scheuer, really) or Ahmed Rashid...

A really interesting look at Saddam's regime comes in Scott Ritter's "Endgame" about the post GWI era and how no one was finding any WMD anywhere in Iraq and how toothless the regime was by the mid-1990's.

The really funny parts are all of the ridiculous attempts to link bin Laden to Saddam. Saddam represented Everything bin Laden finds repulsive in Today's Arab Leader: He was secular, he was self-serving, he was a dictator who brutally repressed the people and he was actually a sometime friend of the USA. (For a long time I kept a picture hanging in my cubicle of a smiling Don Rumsfeld shaking hands with our "friend" Saddam Hussein).

Bottom line: bin Laden wanted Saddam out of the picture in Iraq LONG before anyone in Washington did.

Now someone mentioned North Korea and nukes. Conveniently, North Korea got most everything they needed to build a nuke from our great friend and kindred Democratic spirit in Asia. Thats right kids! Pakistan! Why, they even used C-130s we sold to them to ship the pieces parts the North Koreans couldn't build themselves. Then of course, Pakistan turned around and supported the Taliban as having the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan would keep India off-balance, thus serving Pakistan's interests in fueling the random acts of terrorism in the Kashmir along with the Random Acts of Open Warfare there in the ongoing struggle with India.

When it was announced way back when that President Junior was unleashing our military on the purveyors of terror in the Middle East I was not sure if they meant Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. I was surprised to find out it was Iraq considering we had them bottled up with no sign of them being able to do much of anything but shoot an odd missile (as if they were doing any damage - I mean - get real kids. We were enforcing a no fly zone against what had become a sub 3rd world country). Meanwhile, the fundamentalist madrassas that we had encouraged the Saudis to fund in Pakistan were churning out fresh fighters who, having run out of Soviets to fight were more than happy to fight us.

Sometimes the dumb stuff you do turns out to bite you really hard....and boy, have we done a lot of dumb stuff over there...

ignorant wrote: Mmmmm Yellow Cake.. Does it come with buttercream frosting?

Nope, cream cheese frosting

I hated Sadaam's mustache. If that was the sole reason we went in, I am OK with that. Fashion must be severly dealt with!

JohnSSC wrote: You folks should try reading something other than MSNBC. No offense. Like the 9/11 Commission Report, or Imperial Hubris (anything by Michael Scheuer, really) or Ahmed Rashid... A really interesting look at Saddam's regime comes in Scott Ritter's "Endgame" about the post GWI era and how no one was finding any WMD anywhere in Iraq and how toothless the regime was by the mid-1990's. The really funny parts are all of the ridiculous attempts to link bin Laden to Saddam. Saddam represented Everything bin Laden finds repulsive in Today's Arab Leader: He was secular, he was self-serving, he was a dictator who brutally repressed the people and he was actually a sometime friend of the USA. (For a long time I kept a picture hanging in my cubicle of a smiling Don Rumsfeld shaking hands with our "friend" Saddam Hussein). Bottom line: bin Laden wanted Saddam out of the picture in Iraq LONG before anyone in Washington did. Now someone mentioned North Korea and nukes. Conveniently, North Korea got most everything they needed to build a nuke from our great friend and kindred Democratic spirit in Asia. Thats right kids! Pakistan! Why, they even used C-130s we sold to them to ship the pieces parts the North Koreans couldn't build themselves. Then of course, Pakistan turned around and supported the Taliban as having the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan would keep India off-balance, thus serving Pakistan's interests in fueling the random acts of terrorism in the Kashmir along with the Random Acts of Open Warfare there in the ongoing struggle with India. When it was announced way back when that President Junior was unleashing our military on the purveyors of terror in the Middle East I was not sure if they meant Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. I was surprised to find out it was Iraq considering we had them bottled up with no sign of them being able to do much of anything but shoot an odd missile (as if they were doing any damage - I mean - get real kids. We were enforcing a no fly zone against what had become a sub 3rd world country). Meanwhile, the fundamentalist madrassas that we had encouraged the Saudis to fund in Pakistan were churning out fresh fighters who, having run out of Soviets to fight were more than happy to fight us. Sometimes the dumb stuff you do turns out to bite you really hard....and boy, have we done a lot of dumb stuff over there...

Ya know, here's the thing: we definitely have overseas interests. So we have to deal with other countries and governments who have their own agendas. Sometimes that means we gotta hold our noses, like when we buy oil from Saudi Arabia. They have it, we need it, done deal.

Since it's considered bad form to nuke them into oblivion and then turn them into a US state, we leave their government alone.

Saddam was, at one time, in the same position. So have many other dictators etcetera. For a real eye opener, check out the relationship between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin during WWII. FWIW, at one point Uncle Joe was a supporter of Hitler. He then wound up being a much worse murderer of his own people than Hitler or Saddam ever had wet dreams of being. Yet he was a valuable ally during WWII. It could even be argued that the Allied support for Stalin bolstered his regime.

We can play 20/20 hindsight all day long.

Until those who complain about our going to war to protect our interests are willing to accept assassination as an instrument of state policy for ALL countries, things will continue to be that way. Strange: It's not considered appropriate to assassinate a head of state, but it's OK to start a war.

Without massive allie support Russia may have fallen to the Germans. That would have freed up a ton of german soldiers to fight on the western front. They had a relationship with Stalin out of necesity.

Equipment provided under the lend-lease program

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease ^ Leo T. Crowley, "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. 10 Eventful Years (1947)1:520, 2, pp. 858–860.

Aircraft 14,795 Tanks 7,056 Jeeps 51,503 Trucks 375,883 Motorcycles 35,170 Tractors 8,071 Guns 8,218 Machine guns 131,633 Explosives 345,735 tons Building equipment valued $10,910,000 Railroad freight cars 11,155 Locomotives 1,981 Cargo ships 90 Submarine hunters 105 Torpedo boats 197 Ship engines 7,784 Food supplies 4,478,000 tons Machines and equipment $1,078,965,000 Non-ferrous metals 802,000 tons Petroleum products 2,670,000 tons Chemicals 842,000 tons Cotton 106,893,000 tons Leather 49,860 tons Tires 3,786,000 Army boots 15,417,001 pairs

Edit: How do i force a line break on this forum? Damnit

Jensenman wrote:

JohnSSC wrote: You folks should try reading something other than MSNBC. No offense. Like the 9/11 Commission Report, or Imperial Hubris (anything by Michael Scheuer, really) or Ahmed Rashid... A really interesting look at Saddam's regime comes in Scott Ritter's "Endgame" about the post GWI era and how no one was finding any WMD anywhere in Iraq and how toothless the regime was by the mid-1990's. The really funny parts are all of the ridiculous attempts to link bin Laden to Saddam. Saddam represented Everything bin Laden finds repulsive in Today's Arab Leader: He was secular, he was self-serving, he was a dictator who brutally repressed the people and he was actually a sometime friend of the USA. (For a long time I kept a picture hanging in my cubicle of a smiling Don Rumsfeld shaking hands with our "friend" Saddam Hussein). Bottom line: bin Laden wanted Saddam out of the picture in Iraq LONG before anyone in Washington did. Now someone mentioned North Korea and nukes. Conveniently, North Korea got most everything they needed to build a nuke from our great friend and kindred Democratic spirit in Asia. Thats right kids! Pakistan! Why, they even used C-130s we sold to them to ship the pieces parts the North Koreans couldn't build themselves. Then of course, Pakistan turned around and supported the Taliban as having the Taliban in charge of Afghanistan would keep India off-balance, thus serving Pakistan's interests in fueling the random acts of terrorism in the Kashmir along with the Random Acts of Open Warfare there in the ongoing struggle with India. When it was announced way back when that President Junior was unleashing our military on the purveyors of terror in the Middle East I was not sure if they meant Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. I was surprised to find out it was Iraq considering we had them bottled up with no sign of them being able to do much of anything but shoot an odd missile (as if they were doing any damage - I mean - get real kids. We were enforcing a no fly zone against what had become a sub 3rd world country). Meanwhile, the fundamentalist madrassas that we had encouraged the Saudis to fund in Pakistan were churning out fresh fighters who, having run out of Soviets to fight were more than happy to fight us. Sometimes the dumb stuff you do turns out to bite you really hard....and boy, have we done a lot of dumb stuff over there...

Ya know, here's the thing: we definitely have overseas interests. So we have to deal with other countries and governments who have their own agendas. Sometimes that means we gotta hold our noses, like when we buy oil from Saudi Arabia. They have it, we need it, done deal. Since it's considered bad form to nuke them into oblivion and then turn them into a US state, we leave their government alone. Saddam was, at one time, in the same position. So have many other dictators etcetera. For a real eye opener, check out the relationship between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin during WWII. FWIW, at one point Uncle Joe was a supporter of Hitler. He then wound up being a much worse murderer of his own people than Hitler or Saddam ever had wet dreams of being. Yet he was a valuable ally during WWII. It could even be argued that the Allied support for Stalin bolstered his regime. We can play 20/20 hindsight all day long. Until those who complain about our going to war to protect our interests are willing to accept assassination as an instrument of state policy for ALL countries, things will continue to be that way. Strange: It's not considered appropriate to assassinate a head of state, but it's OK to start a war.

IIRC, one of our myopic Congresses and a president named Carter put that policy in place - the same people who ignored the impending upheavel in Iran and enabled the overthrow of the Shah and his relatively "US friendly" government.

That regime was no piece-of-cake, but the alternative has been rather more troublesome, and not just for US interests. Perhaps thats why we don't meddle with internal issues within Saudi Arabia.

Jensenman makes a good point - using 20/20 hindsight to reinforce a critical viewpoint does little to solve anything.

Time to move forward, folks.

Ah yes, when in doubt, blame Carter!

Except it was the USA who had the perfectly legitimate ruler of Iran "removed" and the Shah put in his place in the first place - I think that was Eisenhower (Dulles & Co.).

The Middle East was not invented 30 years ago kids. The West has been screwing with it since the turn of the century. Remarkably, our interests there coincided with the discovery of oil...

The problem with not learning from the past is that we are doomed to repeat it...