[techweenie]

I heard Rush all hysterical Friday about yellowcake and Iraq's attemps to buy it. Here are some details he didn't discuss.

1. Yellowcake isn't a weapon material. It's unprocessed material with 70-90% uranium oxide. It's so unthreatening that we left stockpiles of even more (550 tons, by some reports) of uranium ore behind in Iraq after Desert Storm.

2. Niger has fairly strict export controls on yellowcake. There is international oversight on its purchase and transport.

3. Niger responded negatively to a '99 trade delegation from Iraq, seeking to upen up more trade between the countries. (Wilson)

4. It's unclear whether there are 400 tons of yellowcake in Niger.

5. It's known that there is a large amount of uranium ore naturally occurring in Iraq that simply has to be mined (over and above the 550 metric tons already mined).

6. There are some allegations that Iran was seeking 400 tons of yellowcake (they have the means to weaponize it) and that they created the 'Iraq' cover story to throw off suspicion. Others have suggdested intelligence sources merely misred "Iraq" for Iran" in reports

7. Enriching uranium requires one of two methods: centrifugal or gas. there is no evidence that a resource for either process exists in -- or is available to -- Iraq.

8. Less than 100 lbs of enriched uranium is derived from each ton of ore.

9. Creating an atomic weapon once they actually obtained enriched uranium may or may not have been within the scientific abilities of Saddam's Iraq.

10. Wilson's report stated that there was no evidence of Saddam attempting to buy uranium from Niger. No one had produced evidence that this was not correct.

11. Wilson, not a CIA operative or trained investigator, apparently included in his report reference to documents that others (IAEA) had publicly pronounced as 'clearly forgeries.'

12. Wilson was suggested as 'somebody to talk to' in a memo from his wife. It is not clear that the CIA intended to send anyone to Niger at that time.

13. When Wilson came in to the CIA offices to talk about what he knew -- in response to the memo -- his wife was briefly in the meeting, but left (indicating to the dispassionate observer that she was not that involved in the whole thing). He said: “She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.” In fact, it's not clear a 'trip' was even planned at that time.

14. About a week later, Wilson was asked to go to Niger.

15. When he came back to make his report, again, his wife was not present at the meeting.

This does not sound like a career politician and a career CIA operative out to sabotage George Bush to me.

I think the administration looks bad for tryiing to create fear over unsuccessful attempts to obtain materials that could not directly be used in weapons, and certainly not in WMDs.

YMMV. Feel free to challenge any of this... I'll be interested in any documents that disagree with the ones I used for this post.