Claim: The removal of yellowcake uranium from Iraq in 2008 proved that Saddam Hussein had been trying to restart Iraq’s nuclear program.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2008]
Uranium in Iraq? I wonder why this hasn’t been on the evening news . . . Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq Last major stockpile from Saddam’s nuclear efforts arrives in Canada http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334 Secret U.S. Mission Hauls Uranium From Iraq On The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program – a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium – reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans. See anything wrong with this picture? We have been hearing from the far-left for more than five years how, ‘Bush lied.’ Somehow, that slogan loses its credibility now that It appears that American troops found the This is vindication for the Bush administration, having been attacked mercilessly by the liberal media and the far-left pundits on the blogosphere. Now that it is proven that President Bush did not lie about Saddam’s nuclear ambitions, one would think the mainstream media would report the story? Once the AP released the story, the mainstream media should have picked it up and broadcast it worldwide. This never happened, due in large part I believe, to the fact that the mainstream media would have to admit they were wrong about Bush’s war motives all along. Thankfully, the AP got it right when it said, “The removal of Closing the book on Saddam’s nuclear legacy? Did Saddam have a nuclear legacy after all? I thought Bush lied? As it turns out, the people who lied were Joe Wilson and his wife. Valerie Plame engaged in a clear case of nepotism and convinced the CIA to send her husband on a fact finding mission in February 2002, seeking to determine if Saddam Hussein attempted to buy yellowcake from Niger. The CIA and British intelligence believed Saddam contacted Niger for that purpose but needed proof. During his trip to Niger, Wilson actually interviewed the former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki. Mayaki told Wilson that in June of 1999, an Iraqi delegation expressed interest in ‘expanding commercial relations’ for the purposes of purchasing yellowcake. Wilson chose to overlook Mayaki’s remarks and reported to the CIA that there was no evidence of Hussein wanting to purchase yellowcake from Niger. However, with British intelligence insisting the claim was true, President Bush used that same claim in his State of the Union address in January of 2003. Wilson did this in spite of the fact that Mayaki said Saddam did try to buy the yellowcake from Niger. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disagreed with Wilson and supported Mayaki’s claim. This meant nothing to Wilson who was opposed to the Iraq war and thus had ulterior motives in covering up the prime minister’s statements. It was a simple tactic really. If the far-left and their friends in the media could prove Bush lied about Hussein wanting to purchase yellowcake from Niger, it would undermine President Bush’s credibility and give them more cause for asking what other ‘lies’ he may have told. Yet, the real lie came from Wilson, who interpreted his own meaning from the prime minister’s statements and concluded all by himself that the claim of Saddam attempting to purchase yellowcake was ‘unequivocally wrong.’ Curiously, the CIA sat on this information and did not inform the CIA Director, who sided with Bush on the yellowcake claim. This was made public in a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report in July 2004. Valerie Plame also engaged in her own lie campaign by spreading the notion that the Bush administration ‘outed’ her as a CIA agent. Never mind that it was Richard Armitage — no friend of the Bush administration — who leaked Plame’s identity to the press. Never mind that Plame had not been in the field as a CIA agent in some six years. The truth is, due to their opposition to the war, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, the mainstream media and their left-wing friends on the blogosphere engaged in a propaganda campaign to undermine the Bush administration. Now that Saddam’s uranium has been made public and is no longer a threat to the world, do you think these aforementioned parties will apologize and admit they were wrong? Don’t count on it. The rest of the Ame! rican people should hear the truth about Saddam’s uranium. It is up to you and me to inform them every chance we get. As far as the anti-war crowd is concerned, the next time they say that, ‘Bush lied,’ we should tell them to, ‘Have the yellowcake and eat it too.’ |
Origins: In 2001, the government of Italy came into possession of documents that purportedly demonstrated Iraqi officials were attempting to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger (yellowcake can be enriched in centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium), and the Italian government shared these documents with intelligence officials in the U.S. and U.K. The CIA
dispatched former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger in February 2002 on an eight-day trip to that country to investigate; later, on
Shortly after the publication of Wilson’s
Flash forward five years: In July 2008, the U.S. government announced that it had completed the secret removal of
There are also health dangers associated with concentrated forms of natural uranium, and since little is secure in Iraq, officials wanted to remove it. After the American invasion in 2003, Tuwaitha was looted. Barrels used to store the yellowcake were stolen and sold to local people, who used them to store water and food and to wash clothes, according to a report by the atomic energy agency.
Although the material cannot be used in its current form for a nuclear weapon or even a
The item reproduced in the example block above cites the July 2008 removal of yellowcake from Iraq as proof that Iraq had in fact been buying yellowcake in an attempt to restart its nuclear program (and ultimately produce nuclear weapons) before the
The yellowcake removed from Iraq in 2008 was material that had long since been identified, documented, and stored in sealed containers under the supervision of
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.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam’s nuclear efforts.
Or, as the New York Times stated more plainly:
The yellowcake removed from Iraq was not the same yellowcake that President Bush claimed, in a now discredited section of his 2003 State of the Union address, that
What happened was that U.S. Marines stumbled across known stocks of uranium stored beneath the Tuwaitha nuclear research center, stocks that were not suitable for use in atomic weapons and had long since been cataloged, stored in sealed containers, and safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), stored at a site that had been repeatedly surveyed by U.N. inspectors:
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspected the Tuwaitha nuclear complex at least two dozen times and maintains a thick dossier on the site, had no immediate comment. But an expert familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections told The Associated Press that it was implausible to believe that U.S. forces had uncovered anything new at the site. Instead, the official said, the Marines apparently broke U.N. seals designed to ensure the materials aren’t diverted for weapons use or end up in the wrong hands. “What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn’t get diverted,” the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Several tons of low-grade uranium has been stored at Tuwaitha, Iraq’s principal nuclear research center and a site that has been under IAEA safeguards for years, the official said. The Iraqis were allowed to keep the material because it was unfit for weapons use without costly and time-consuming enrichment. The uranium was inspected by the U.N. nuclear agency twice a year and was kept under IAEA seal at least until the Marines seized control of the site. The U.N. nuclear agency’s inspectors have visited Tuwaitha about two dozen times, including a dozen checks carried out since December, most recently on Feb. 6. It was among the first sites that IAEA inspectors sought out after the resumption of inspections on Nov. 27 after a nearly four-year break.
American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said. They said the U.S. troops may have broken U.N. seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material.
The U.S. did manage to ameliorate a substantial security concern by secretly shipping stored yellowcake out of Iraq in
Last updated: 25 October 2008
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