Strange that the Main Stream Media hasn't reported this.

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AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq



By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 6, 4:45 AM ET



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's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles 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 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.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iraq_yellowcake_mission

Gee.... Yellow Cake. A Key part in the making of Nuclear Weapons. Nuclear Weapons which fall under "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Which was one of the reason why we invaded Iraq.... was found and removed by US Forces.

Now don't get me wrong here. Is Yellow Cake a WMD by itself? No. But will say since Yellow Cake isn't a WMD it's not a smoking gun. By that logic then.... a Thief with Burglary Tools, plans for the store, and is caught staking out the joint means that the thief isn't a thief.

Saddam was a bastard. We was trying to get WMDs. Before we invaded he could have moved, destroyed, or buried his crap. Every single move we made was shown live on CNN. But everything he did was secret.

What really surprises me is the fact that this bit of news hasn't been reported on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC, and CBS. But here did I learn of this? What many people call biased right wing media.

The Rush Limbaugh Show and then Fox News Radio.

But hey... I'm just part of the vast right wing conspiracy.
 
Ha, I guess I'm with ya then 5.56. I prefer facts instead of ideology in my news, especially ideology I don't agree with.
You won't hear this stuff from the crap liberals media like the Clintoon News Network because interferes with their organizations roles like code pink and the like.
 
This would not be that big of a deal because Saddam had a pretty robust nuclear program until the Israelis bombed the crap out of it. I think it was pretty well known that this "yellow cake" uranium was left over from the days Saddam was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. From what I can gather, there was not enough found (not really found we knew he had it) to make a nuclear weapon and he had no enriching facilities to turn it into a weapon.

From your own article
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,
Whats this we knew exactly where it and that it was not being used to make weapons, since Saddam knew if he moved it, he would get hit.

In conclusion

This was old uranium
We knew he had it.
We knew where it was.
We knew how much there was.
There was no new Uranium after 1991.

Yet for some reason unknown to me it is supposed to be national news when we finally get around to moving it.

Using this as justification for the Iraq war is a pretty steep step to take. Especially when used in a manner to try to breed the opinion that at the time of the 2003 war Saddam was pursuing an active nuclear program when the evidence clearly points to the well, contrary.
 
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Yellowcake is not a WMD, nor anything vaguely like one. Unless of course we would consider a bar of high grade steel a firearm or a stack of sawn timber to be an architectural marvel.

It is merely refined and concentrated Uranium Dioxide. It is a mildly radioactive alpha emitter and is packed into 400 kg drums by men wearing no more than Tyvec coveralls, gloves and an electrostatic air supply hood.

Alpha radiation is stopped by a sheet of copy paper and only dangerous if ingested or allowed into an open wound.
 
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This would not be that big of a deal because Saddam had a pretty robust nuclear program until the Israelis bombed the crap out of it. I think it was pretty well known that this "yellow cake" uranium was left over from the days Saddam was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. From what I can gather, there was not enough found (not really found we knew he had it) to make a nuclear weapon and he had no enriching facilities to turn it into a weapon.

From your own article
Whats this we knew exactly where it and that it was not being used to make weapons, since Saddam knew if he moved it, he would get hit.

In conclusion

This was old uranium
We knew he had it.
We knew where it was.
We knew how much there was.
There was no new Uranium after 1991.

Yet for some reason unknown to me it is supposed to be national news when we finally get around to moving it.

Using this as justification for the Iraq war is a pretty steep step to take. Especially when used in a manner to try to breed the opinion that at the time of the 2003 war Saddam was pursuing an active nuclear program when the evidence clearly points to the well, contrary.

I think this is an attempt to connect the old Iraqi nuclear program to the discredited "Yellow cake" documents of 2002-3 one of those "if we connect real info to fake info we can make new facts" type things that we continually see of the Iraq aftermath.
 
We have to watch out for spins, both on the left and the right.
I did more research here to find the whole movement about the American mad cow prone beef might be a hoax after all... but people take it as fact.
Always be careful about those things. The press very rarely know about the subject they're talking about.
Unless they find ready to use weapons grade NBC weapons in some underground bunker that no one knew about previously, I won't be convinced. I understand there may have been WMDs and they may have been moved but this is purely speculation and we cannot take this claim at face value.
Saddam pretended he had WMDs, thinking that it would help keep the West away from him and it failed. The Bush administration was over confident in their belief that Saddam had actual WMDs. Obviously more complicated than just that but basically, I think that's what happened.
 
I try to stay neutral about many things.
It helped me stay professional about my work.
And it gives my arguments credibility and accuracy.
If they can't find the damned WMDs, they better show the evidence that led them to the conclusion because a lot of people have died over there. I know the mission has changed entirely and I believe a pullout is the worst thing you can do at this point. In fact I have argued that even TALKING about pulling out hurts the mission and helps the enemy in all areas. However, whether or not Saddam had WMDs or not is a different matter.
 
Saddam pretended he had WMDs, thinking that it would help keep the West away from him and it failed. The Bush administration was over confident in their belief that Saddam had actual WMDs. Obviously more complicated than just that but basically, I think that's what happened.

What makes you so sure it was the West he was trying to keep away, on one border he had Iran and on the other Syria neither country was friendly with Iraq in all honesty I think he saw the West as the least of his problems.
 
I think with the showdown with the US, I think he was trying to keep the West away.
Probably the truth lies between both points.
 
What makes you so sure it was the West he was trying to keep away, on one border he had Iran and on the other Syria neither country was friendly with Iraq in all honesty I think he saw the West as the least of his problems.

He stated this himself during interrogations, he openly admitted to keeping the idea of him having a WMD program alive for the sheer purpose of deterring a Iranian invasion which in his head he believed was imminent due to the lack of his ability to patrol his northern border.
 
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