Weapons of Mass Destruction Fraud

[MustangSally]

Now here's a guy that knows what he's talking about, he even brings Bill Clinton's name into it.

So as you all can see just because I am a Democrat, doesn't mean I can't be mindful of what a person or ppl in my own party had been up to.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/382.html

[JustinS]

Bill was an idiot, but he didn't completely lie about the WMD situation. I hate the man and what he stands for (read AWB) but this time he wasn't wrong about WMD's in Iraq, it just was never blasted over all the news channels.


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.

The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.

The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.

The "yellowcake" uranium transfer was requested by the Iraqi government at the encouragement of the U.S. government, Whitman said.

The United States approached Canadian company Cameco to bid for the material, according Cameco spokesman Lyle Krahn. He would not disclose the winning bid amount.

Krahn admitted that this was not a "routine transaction," but he said the agreement was approved by the Canadian government and was carefully monitored.

The undertaking, named "Operation McCall" by Pentagon officials, was in the planning stages for months and was completed Saturday after the material had been in transit for weeks, according to Whitman.

He said yellowcake uranium is a commonly traded commodity used for nuclear power generation. It is not enriched and cannot be used without first going through a complicated enrichment process, he said, but because of the unstable nature of Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi government decided it should be moved out of that country. Iraq has no nuclear power generating plants.

The uranium was packed into 110 shipping containers moved by convoy from a facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. The containers were first moved to the secure International Zone in central Baghdad and then to Baghdad International Airport, where thery were loaded onto C-17 cargo planes.

It took 37 flights to move the shipping containers out of Iraq to a "third country," Whitman said.

A Pentagon official who asked not to be named said that third country was Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean where the United Kingdom and the United States operate a joint military base.

From that third country, Whitman said, the containers were loaded onto the SS Gopher State, a U.S.-owned crane ship normally used to haul equipment in and out of war zones. The ship carried the uranium to Canada, where it was bought by Cameco, a private firm.

The uranium will be sent by truck to two processing plants in Ontario, Krahn said. Once it has been enriched for energy use it will be sold to power plant operators, he said.

The United States is Cameco's largest customer, Krahn said, but he did not specify if the Iraq yellowcake would ultimately end up in the United States.

Whitman said the Department of Defense's cost of securing and transporting the uranium from Tuwaitha to Canada was $70 million, and the government of Iraq had agreed in principal to reimburse the United States for part of that cost.

He said he could not say how much Iraq intends to repay the United States.
and one from FOX news:

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.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What is now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

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.

The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.

"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.

The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.

And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger — and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims — led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.

Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.

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.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre (9,300-hectare) 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.

Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.

"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.

Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.

Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.

An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.

But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.

At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers — some leaking or weakened by corrosion — and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.

In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.

On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.

The yellowcake wasn't the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.

Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.

The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.

The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.

Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.

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."

The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.

A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.

A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

[MustangSally]

The quote from cnn is worth reading but I don't put much stock in FOX news or Billo. Clinton I like as a President he brought us out of the "RED-" that the last president put us into, he also didn't always go along with what the other Democrats in the House and Senate wanted to do.

As far as the WMD's go, Scott Ritter was telling it like it really was and because Scott would not go along with this Administration's propaganda that lead up to attacking Iraq it cost him.

IMO, it is time for a change of guards ( so to speak ) in the Oval office, someone's got to clean up the mess that was made, someone's got to bring our country up out of the "Red -" , right the wrongs that has taken place for the almost 8 yrs, to put back the Integity that our country once had so the other countries would respect and work with us again for the better good of the world.

I had known before we went into Iraq WHY we were really going there and Ritter confirmed it in that video, it had nothing to do with WMDs it was all about getting even with Saddam for putting on "hit" on George Sr., also for Cheney's company that he still had interest in to make money,........... that's all it was really about and because of those two men over 4000 troops have died and thousands have been maimed for life, including my cousin's son.

[JustinS]

Yeah, we definitely need someone to take us out of the "red" and bring us right into socialism. :roll:

This country was founded upon the constitution, adhere to it or stfu and get out.

[69gt4speed]

Whatever the case getting rid of/reprocessing toxic material is better than dumping it unprotected in the ground to contaminate ground water or build houses on top of it like we did for years in the usa. I think its a basic right for u.s. citizens to know about this before we buy a house or drink water. Some don't think it matters. Who needs wmd when we live on it and drink degreaser in the usa or anywhere? or breathe bad air?
Look here what we do... right here linn/johnson co.
http://www.scorecard.org/index.tcl
We can't even fish cedar lake as you know.
http://www.iowadnr.gov/water/watershed/ ... rlake2.pdf (http://www.iowadnr.gov/water/watershed/tmdl/files/final/cedarlake2.pdf)
http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/l ... D005279039 (http://www.scorecard.org/env-releases/land/site.tcl?epa_id=IAD005279039)
Work at amana, live in middle amana?
http://www.iowadnr.gov/land/consites/hw ... amana2.pdf (http://www.iowadnr.gov/land/consites/hwregistry/sitesummaries/amana2.pdf)
How about hills ia. w perchlorate?
How about u of i area?
The toxic waste underneath the Iowa-Illinois Manor Apartment Building comes from coal tar, a residual by-product of the process of coal-gasification. For years, this site was utilized by energy companies to produce natural gas from coal. According to reports from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. E.P.A., toxic chemicals exist in the air and lie in the soil and groundwater at this site as well as the sediment and surface water of nearby Ralston Creek and perhaps the Iowa River. The U.S. E.P.A. has called this site "highly contaminated" in places. This site is one of just 172 such sites statewide. Clean-up projects at similar sites such as one at 716 1st St. SE in Cedar Rapids, revealed highly contaminated soil and groundwater that is still being monitored.

[69gt4speed]

Yeah, we definitely need someone to take us out of the "red" and bring us right into socialism. :roll:

This country was founded upon the constitution, adhere to it or stfu and get out.

Exactly right, I'm not some damn commy or etc. I just don't like to be told all is ok when it is not. Don't care who it is. Maybe don't care yet but you will. We can have right without socialism, hell w socialism, imo we are not rich enough like saudi. I trust hardly anyone period, they feed u bs w a happy face on everything.

[JacobS]

well heres the way i look at it...everybody remember WWII and how it brought us out of the great depression? i wouldnt be suprised if some time in the near future we go to WWIII due to the fact that the whole economy is starting to go to shit...

[69gt4speed]

Yeah, we definitely need someone to take us out of the "red" and bring us right into socialism. :roll:

This country was founded upon the constitution, adhere to it or stfu and get out.

The real truth btw we already have socialism, health care, schools, socialised of sort ( public oversight) utilities, the list is long. We all benefit unless in the case of school, parents have enough money to send you to private schools/college. I don't bitch about it, I've got my share and it works somewhat.

[ZEE]

All those reports are pretty old. As of 2 or 3 years ago you can now eat the fish in cedar lake according to new tests. I still wouldn't but they say you can.
It is a known fact though that after a war the economy usually booms. I don't care why we went to Iraq. We're there lets finish it with out tucking tail and running.

WW1 117000 US military deaths
WW2 417000 US military deaths
Vietnam 58000 US military deaths
Iraq 4127 US military deaths

Casualties do happen in war. It is war after all. Put into perspective the casualty rate is a lot better than previous wars. 2008 marked a very drastic drop in casualties. Due to the troop surge that everybody else said wouldn't work.

[69gt4speed]

No one is really talking turning tail. Iraq gov said they are doing well enough and want us out. Don't have a problem w that. I wish we would get a decent deal though. You have to remember Anita has family still there. And the real facts are we started putting the push on their gov to make some deals w factions. They/we did finally, then we came w more troops to get rid of the ones that wouldn't agree. Takes more than troops, we had 500k in nam. most those ppl didn't want us. A rag tag group of ppl took down the most powerful countries several times. Got them to go away.

[JJ240]

Its pretty pointless to talk about the war in iraq, as both candidates for president will do the same thing. They both know the repricussions of leaving immediately, and the repricussions for staying too long. Expect action quick after the election, but don't count on us being 100% pulled out for quite a few years.

[black88gt]

Yeah, we definitely need someone to take us out of the "red" and bring us right into socialism. :roll:


i would have liked to see a true fiscal conservative(much like ron paul, but maybe not as severe) as a viable candidate. economically he or romney seemed to be the best choices but theyre not an option anymore

what i'd to for a second coming of reagan...

[ZEE]

Just for the record I have family there. I know lot's of people that were there. I wasn't there but I did 4 years active duty in the Marine Corps and would have proudly gone were my country told me to go. It wasn't up to us to ask why but to do or die.....or something like that. It was a long time ago.

[69gt4speed]

I want you to know Zee I hope they come back safe and sound. 20 billion a month is a lot of change plus our family members/friends we can't replace them.