It doesnt count. Unless they found a fully operative weapon, like a big "fat man" style bomb with the words
"To George - From Saddam, with love" with a big Fedex Overnight waybill stuck on the side that said "Anytown USA" on it, the left would still argue:

- Sure there was "A" bomb, but how much of of threat was a single bomb ? Was it worth going to war over?

- Sure there was "A" bomb, but how could he have delivered it?, he had no air force!

- Sure there was "A" bomb, but theres no guarantee that it would have worked.

- Sure there was "A" Bomb, but it was Rumsfeld who gave them the tools to make it so its our fault!

- Sure there was "A" Bomb, but given how we have treated him, can we blame him for wanting one?

- Sure there was "A" Bomb,but how many does Israel have? ( Possible alternate: But how many do we have?)

- Sure there was "A" Bomb, but we should have waited longer to let the sanctions work.

- Sure there was "A" Bomb, but there was a rush to invade, he may have just been trying to get rid of it.

the whole "Didnt find WMD's" thing just makes me sick to my stomach. Every time I head that argument I picture that kurdish mother holding her baby in hillabja, dead of a mustard gas attack. To me the people who make that argument are mocking that woman and the deaths of thousands in Iraq at the hands of that filthy monster.

I wish that instead of trying to be an adult about it, Bush would have just said " Were invading Iraq just so I can knock the smirk of that fat syphillitic pimps face".

Unbelieveable. Nuclear Material in large quantities found and the news goes right past it.

For a little perspective, the amount of Uranium used to reach supercritical mass in the Fat Man bomb in World War II was 22 pounds. One metric ton is 3,902.18 pounds (according to www.onlineconversion.com). With the proper equipment (trigger mechanisms, etc.), this could be manufactured into 177 "Fat Man"-grade bombs.

Thanks to http://www.me.utexas.edu/~uer/manhattan/bomb-design.html for the uranium info.

Ah, The Manhattan Project, which was started because of questionable intelligence that said that Hitler was working on an Atomic Weapon. Yet, despite 60 years of searching, no Nazi Atomic weapon was ever found. If there had been a CIA in the 1940s, Im sure they would have A) Leaked any info to embarrass FDR and B) Sent Charles Lindberg to Berlin to look into it so he could write an Op Ed in the New York Times saying that FDR was leading us to war on false means.

I guess that makes Einstein and Oppenhiemer neo-cons and someone in the opposition should be calling for a retroactive impeachment of that evil warmonger Roosevelt.

Hate to burst your bubble, but there's a big difference between "enriched" uranium and bomb-grade, highly-enriched uranium. Enriched uranium is used in medicine, science, and all sorts of non-WMD programs. This isn't to say the material couldn't have been part of a potential bomb starter kit, but it's not exactly proof of a conspiracy to provide terrorists with weapons.

And I am glad it's not in Iraq anymore. Now if only we had funded programs to take radioactive material out of the former USSR, too, the world would be a safer place.

The BBC article is dated July 7, 2004. A little stale for Google News.

1. Why isn't this bigger news? Enriched or weapons grade or whatever. Shouldn't we be aware of it and discussing it's meaning?

And why isn't anyone actively getting the story out? Smart people know effective use of the media is the new decision arm (or so I've read...)

2. I signed up for a google news alert on redistricting and gerrymandering about a month ago. Haven't gotten one notice even though I can find those stories on their news site.

Dave:

Jon's right about enrichment levels--"enriched" could be 3% U-235, but nowhere near the 85% or so you need to make a bomb. Though you could use it as reactor fuel and make a good deal of plutonium from it. Incidentally, Fat Man was a plutonium bomb; it was Little Boy that used uranium, and I seem to recall they used a hell of a lot of it (more than 100 lbs; they hadn't tested it and wanted to make sure they'd have a supercritical mass).

But OK: 1700 kg of 3% U-235 corresponds to 60 kg of 85% U-235. If you do a decent job of recovering it, you could get the 20 kg or so from which any reasonably skilled fool could make a bomb.

Frank has a great point: To those of us who believe that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was, not an imminent threat, but a gathering threat better dealt with now than later, this is a big find, one more piece of proof that of course his intentions were malign and sooner or later we'd have regretted leaving him in place.

To those convinced that we didn't have to go to war, well, this stuff is still a long way from a bomb; show me the (non-buried) centrifuges, show me the reactor they'd have needed to make plutonium from this. In time, inspections would have found it.

Anyway, while I respect the latter argument, I'd better never again hear its proponents snarking about yellowcake and how needlessly paranoid we were. If "seeking to buy yellowcake" is the justification that, if hollow, is devastating to the administration's case, then surely possessing nuclear fuel by the metric ton is serious, no?

Oh, and Jon: What makes you think we haven't given the USSR a great deal of aid specifically earmarked toward securing their nuclear materials?

Whoops--I was unclear on what I meant by Frank's great point: namely, that this won't change the debate much.

we did give the russians aid, but didn't fully fund it. lots of reasons why: congress is venal (duh), there were issues with implementation (russia's got a lot of crooks, again duh), other spending priorities (congress.. hard to keep things as budgeted), russians were slightly slow in doing their part (strategic issue for russia, plus they can make nicey with the chinese and maybe keep more stuff... russians are justifiably very paranoid)

but to say that it is the US' fault for not fully funding nuclear security when russia is actively engaged in aiding countries inimical to us with rocketry and nuclear programs... not exactly the most coherent thing to say.

JPS is right. Having this stuff is worse than trying to buy, or even having, yellowcake.

Thus the threat in this regard was much, much more serious than as described in those "16 words" in the Presidents SOTU speech. Far from overstating the evidence in order to make his case, he was in fact understating it by several orders of magnitude. Not: "trying to buy", but "has already purchased 2 tons". Not: "yellowcake", but "uranium".

The fact is that the British conclusion mentioned in the speech was not only correct (as they still believe), but this is the actual proof that what they uncovered was just the tip of the iceberg.

Why, then, the White House hasn't had the President, the SecDef, the SecState, and the Pentagon all having press conferences and making speeches to trumpet "we were right! Joe Wilson was wrong!" is beyond me. Too many falsehoods are being set into the popular consciousness because the lies are repeated constantly, and the WH maintains a "dignified" (read: supine) silence.

A centrifuge was dug up in the back yard of one of Saddam's scientists. Isn't this exactly the equipment needed to extract the U-235?

Now if only we had funded programs to take radioactive material out of the former USSR, too, the world would be a safer place.

Jon - have you heard this one?

Reality-Based Community Member #1:
Why did the Saudi Arabian chicken cross the road?

Reality-Based Community Member #2:
Well, the prevailing patriarchal rooster culture in the Middle East was probably one of the motivating factors, but isn't it hypocritical to claim that the cultural ills which promote and allow chicken/rooster violence exist there and not in this country?

Reality-Based Community Member #1:
Absolutely, and in telling this joke I in no way meant to exoticise domestic crimes and excuse people in this country from any ownership over this society, which also tacitly excuses violence against chickens.

Reality-Based Community Member #2:
Well said. You know, when it comes to chickens' rights, Saudi Arabia is certainly “worse off” than America, but that doesn’t make our downfalls any less excusable, and it seems too easy to tell chickens here, “quit complaining, life could be worse.”

Reality-Based Community Member #1:
Right on. We’ve got to look at our own chicken culture too, with the same level of scrutiny.

Reality-Based Community Member #2:
Exactly. Oh, almost forgot: Ha ha!

did anyone bother to read the linked article? There was this:

The explosion of a so-called "dirty bomb" in a city by a terrorist group is a major concern of Western intelligence agencies.

Rather than causing a nuclear explosion, a "dirty bomb" would see radioactive material combined with a conventional explosive - probably causing widespread panic and requiring a large clean-up operation.

Uranium would not be suitable for fashioning such a device, though appropriate material may have been among the other unidentified "sources".

There was also this:

"The 1,000 "sources" evacuated in the Iraqi operation included a "huge range" of radioactive items used for medical purposes and industrial purposes, a spokesman for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration told AP news agency."

So we removed a bunch of uranium that wasn't weapons grade and wasn't even suitable for a dirty bomb, and we removed a bunch of medical and industrial isotopes. All this from an article that's 16 months old. Must be a slow news day.

Locomotive Breath:

"A centrifuge was dug up in the back yard of one of Saddam's scientists. Isn't this exactly the equipment needed to extract the U-235?"

If you're determined, as some I know are, to deny that this would ever have been anything to worry about, dismissal of the centrifuge parts (and they were just key parts, not an entire working centrifuge) goes something like this:

Well they were buried, weren't they? Covered in dirt! If they'd intended to use them they wouldn't have done that, would they? How well do you think they'd have worked after that? Not exactly an imminent threat!

Nice one, Steven Donegal:

"uranium that wasn't weapons grade and wasn't even suitable for a dirty bomb"

That's no comment on this batch of uranium, you know. Uranium just isn't very radioactive. If you're trying to kill, maim or scare the hell out of people by spreading radioisotopes, you'd want something much hotter.

Like, say, the medical and industrial isotopes we removed--but I guess that doesn't mean much to you.

Point is, no: Low-enriched uranium is not suitable for a dirty bomb. It has only two uses, two reasons for which anyone would have enriched it at all--

1) Reactor fuel, and using it as such will generate fissionable plutonium from the U-238. Extracting that plutonium is a nasty but well-solved chemical engineering process.

2) As a feed material for isotopic separation. Hell of a lot easier to enrich U-235 in two stages.

In short, if you don't deny they had it, then you should admit that they had it in order to pursue nuclear fission. You are left, then, with either the argument that for all we know their intentions were peaceful; or that even if they weren't, we'd have caught it in time, therefore war was not necessary.

And yes, I did read the article--I was looking for enrichment levels, which they don't mention.

Good God this WMD canard is annoying. When I analyzed my own position on going to war I actually asked myself whether it would matter if he had no WMD. My belief is that it didn't matter. What ultimately mattered was whether Saddam had entirely abandoned his *intent* to have them. Given that the sanctions were eroding the important question was how would Saddam comport himself once free from inspection entirely. The answer seemed obvious. We have gathered some evidence that would support the idea that he would attempt once again to gain them, and proving the opposite was impossible anyway. In my analysis Saddam's post cease-fire behavior sealed his fate. To hell with him and his current defenders.

doug

Umm... it's no secret that Iraq had nuclear materials. They had several closed nuclear plants that still had material in them. The IAEA knew about it... everybody knew about it. Nobody cared. Why? Because it wasn't of the type used to make weapons, that's why.

doug: well said. My pre-war assessment was the same as yours, and I believe our position has since been vindicated by the Duelfer report as well.

I'd just like to see a more vigorous contesting of the WMD argument at all levels. Perhaps it's my old debate training, but an argument unanswered is an argument conceded, and I would prefer to see the anti-war folks denied a even the pretence of a penumbra of legitimacy, since they've basically been talking out of their, um, hats for the last three years.

Leftists admit they'd rather have Saddam in power in Iraq, than to have Bush successfully democratize an arab country. Bush simply has to fail, whatever it takes, whatever it costs. Destroy the entire world if you must, but destroy Bush.

HT,

The administration has conceded so many damned points to the left without a fight it is irritating.

doug

Alex-

That was my point. He still had the technology (centrifuge) to turn the low-grade uranium into high-grade uranium for nuclear weapons.

Saddam had the raw materials, he had the technology, he had the expertise, he had the intent and he had the motivation. Good enough for me to say he needed to go.

My summary:

The material that was removed was not militarily relevant.

The story was very old.

As far as a dirty bomb is concerned, you don't need *any* radioactive material to do that. All you have to do is make a big fertilizer bomb and explode it 10 miles upwind of a big city in an empty field. Get 10 people to claim it was radioactive, and panic and paranoia will do the rest.

It's not like people know what radioactivity is, and have Geiger counters at home, and know how to use them. Although I wish people did. I'd settle for Geiger counters being cheap enough that anyone who wants a tech toy has one.

This is my favorite story about it.
The headline says it all
U.S. transferred uranium from Iraq without U.N. authorization

So in other words, the story isn't that we found uranium in peace-loving Iraq, it's that we pissed off the UN by removing it to ensure no jihadis could get it.
You really can't parody the MSM, they've become irony- and parody-proof.

"The material that was removed was not militarily relevant."

Yeah, Saddam had gotten it for ... um ... um ... medicinal purposes. Yeah - that's it.

If we had allowed Saddam to develop and sell nuclear weapons as Kerry, Clinton, and other democrats feared in '99, the morons would be screaming about how we diddled and did nothing about what they knew was a threat all along.

These people play politics and don't care for the truth.

They're playing with our lives.

This must be some thing cooked up by the no war crowd, back 2-3 years ago I read a report by ordnance removal teams with photos of 500 tones of yew cake storage area used to make bombs was removed from the Iraqi Nuclear research facility south of badgered and trucked away to the direction of Syria, this happened just before Baghdad fell.

Yellow cake when proceed can be the fuel for nuclear devices, The same stuff Israel got to build their nukes.

Local residents were ordered in to their house, as 50 heavy dump trucks could be heard coming and going to Th site. Later the site was empty. The citizen now use the old containers it store water in. Arms inspectors have confirmed the evidence of the existence of these materials and their disappearance.

Side note on the buried centrifuge thing: Have you seen the pictures of USAF guys digging a MiG-25 out of the sand in Iraq? Completely ruined it. It was buried to prevent us from finding it and blowing it up. No one said Saddam gave the smartest orders - but everyone else was smart enough to do exactly as they were told.

I follow the theory that Saddam believed he had WMDs and was doing his best to hide them from the UN. His own army and scientists knew the programs had fallen apart but no one wanted to be the first one to tell him. It is my Occam's Razor solution to the whole thing.

"Hate to burst your bubble, but there's a big difference between "enriched" uranium and bomb-grade, highly-enriched uranium. Enriched uranium is used in medicine, science, and all sorts of non-WMD programs. This isn't to say the material couldn't have been part of a potential bomb starter kit, but it's not exactly proof of a conspiracy to provide terrorists with weapons."

Aside from the numerous errors here pointed ut by others, can someone point out the numerous X-Ray, MRI and other nuclear medicine examples existing in Saddam era Iraq?

Steve Madrigal opined: "Leftists admit they'd rather have Saddam in power in Iraq, than to have Bush successfully democratize an arab country. Bush simply has to fail, whatever it takes, whatever it costs. Destroy the entire world if you must, but destroy Bush."

One must remember that after the lust for sex, the lust for power even supercedes the lust for wealth.

This, I think, aptly describes the left/Dem mindset. A correlary is the hysterical (think: moonbats)and savage fight being put up by the Saddamite/jihadists now that they are out of power.

to sharpshooter.It has been a long time since I worked on nuclear programs for the AEC and NASA but I can t recall any uses for enriched uranium in nuclear medicine or anything else but weapons.Iostopes yes, but its hard to imagine how enriched U would be used or where . I may be out of date and would appreciate a specific reference.

sharpshooter says"hate to burst your bubble...enriched uranium has many uses in medicine etc."I have now checked google,the US Atomic Energy Commission and the IAEA,and cannot find any use for enriched uranium other than for power reactors or bombs.So Saddam had the material for which he had no other use.As to the arguement did he or did he not have WMDs ,there can be legitimate disagreement.What is not open to debate is "does he have them now.? "For which thanks GW Bush,and the US Armed Forces.

Saddam had 500 metric tons of uranium yellowcake, which enriched could make over 100 Nagasaki bombs. He had the equipment, materials, and knowlege in place to do exactly that.

If I had a machine gun and ammunition with all the parts disassembled on my table, and knew how to put them together, I would still be convicted of possession of a machine gun.

All Saddam needed was the time Bush didn't give him.

Stephen, thanks for mentioning this. Enriched uranium may not be quite up to spec. for making a nuke, but it was hardly designed to be used to make the dials glow on wristwatches, either. The anti-war crew screaming about how Bush lied yadda yadda need to be confronted with details like this. No doubt they'll do the usual of putting hands over their ears, shouting la-la can't hear you!

Dave, minor correction: one metric ton is more like 2204 lbs. (source: memory)