[techweenie]

Okay, before the Bush fans here trumpet this news, I thought I'd give it to you UNspun...

The press (Drudge at least) is making a deal out of the US finding 2 tons of uranium in Tuwaitha, Iraq.

Now, that sounds like a big deal, and Mul and Rush and others will no doubt get very excited about it because the article in the Washington Post fails to expand on the facts.

The article -- and US sources explain that the uranium found was "low-enriched." The article fails to drop the other shoe: low-enriched uranium cannot be used directly to make nuclear weapons.

Certainly, it's significant that Iraq was experimenting with uranium, but, again, the low-enriched stuff was so far from dangerous that when it *was first found in 1990* it wasn't even removed -- just put under seal. The reason it was removed this time was that the facility was unguarded and unsealed, and left open for plundering by anyone... so, "discovering" the uranium wasn't a big deal, since it's been kept right where it was 13 years ago.