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| Iraq |
| U.S. Nuke Find Claim in Iraq Critiqued |
| 2003-04-11 |
| American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the U.S. troops may have broken U.N. seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material. Leaders of a U.S. Marine Corps combat engineering unit claimed earlier this week to have found an underground network of laboratories, warehouses and bombproof offices beneath the closely monitored Tuwaitha nuclear research center just south of Baghdad. It's more than just a claim, they're sitting there. The Marines said they discovered 14 buildings at the site which emitted unusually high levels of radiation, and that a search of one building revealed "many, many drums" containing highly radioactive material. If documented, such a discovery could bolster Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weaponry. Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said officials there have not heard anything through military channels about a Marine inspection at Tuwaitha. The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspected the Tuwaitha nuclear complex at least two dozen times and maintains a thick dossier on the site, had no immediate comment. "Beats us. They had something underground? Whodathunk?" But an expert familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections told The Associated Press that it was implausible to believe that U.S. forces had uncovered anything new at the site. Instead, the official said, the Marines apparently broke U.N. seals designed to ensure the materials aren't diverted for weapons use or end up in the wrong hands. Why exactly is it implausible -- because the IAEA says so? "What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn't get diverted," the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Army Times, meanwhile, reported that troops with the 101st Airborne Division have unearthed 11 shipping containers, filled with sophisticated lab equipment, buried at a chemical plant in Karbala. It said the equipment's value and evidence that some of it may have been smuggled into Iraq raised suspicions that the facility had been used to manufacture chemical weapons. I store lab equipment in barrels in the desert all the time. What's the big deal? U.N. arms inspectors visited a facility in the immediate vicinity of the chemical plant Feb. 23, but did not find the buried equipment. Officials at the U.S. Central Command suggested that no conclusions should be drawn. Oh, no, don't draw a conclusion! Someone at CentCom is a master of understatement. Several tons of low-grade uranium has been stored at Tuwaitha, Iraq's principle nuclear research center and a site that has been under IAEA safeguards for years, the official said. The Iraqis were allowed to keep the material because it was unfit for weapons use without costly and time-consuming enrichment. The uranium was inspected by the U.N. nuclear agency twice a year and was kept under IAEA seal at least until early this week, when the Marines seized control of the site. The U.N. nuclear agency's inspectors have visited Tuwaitha about two dozen times, including a dozen checks carried out since December, most recently on Feb. 6. It was among the first sites that IAEA inspectors sought out after the resumption of inspections on Nov. 27 after a nearly four-year break. On at least one occasion, inspectors with special mountaineering training went underground there to have a look around, according to IAEA documents. David Kay, a former IAEA chief nuclear inspector, said Thursday that the teams he oversaw after the 1991 Gulf War never found an underground site at Tuwaitha despite persistent rumors. "But underground facilities by definition are very hard to detect," he said. "'cause they're underground, you know. I'm an inspector, I know these things!" "When you inspect a place so often, you get overconfident about what you know. It would have been very easy for the inspectors to explain away any excessive radiation at Tuwaitha. The Iraqis could have hidden something clandestine in plain sight." IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, clearly wary of We'll bring the stuff out and invite the press to take pictures. How's that for credibility? |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #7 Oh, THAT nuclear material! |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-04-11 12:12:35 |
| #6 Ack! What I meant to say was.. JAB: My thoughts exactly. (new line) |
| Posted by: Ptah 2003-04-11 08:27:33 |
| #5 JAB: Hmm. You'd think our marines would knowingly break an IAEA seal if they saw one? |
| Posted by: Ptah 2003-04-11 08:26:43 |
| #4 Let's hope that the reports of HEU or Pu are wrong. If they are correct, we almost have to assume the material is now in the hands of terrorists. |
| Posted by: JAB 2003-04-11 07:44:33 |
| #3 ' "What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn't get diverted," the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity.' In the sense that wishing is integral to making it so? Was it even possible to underestimate the effectiveness of those morons? |
| Posted by: VAMark 2003-04-11 07:15:08 |
| #2 lefties are trying to spin it was OK just low-grade uranium, knew all about it etc. But low-grade uranium is NOT highly radioactive unless it has been greatly enriched... ie aluminium tubes. |
| Posted by: anon1 2003-04-11 06:33:48 |
| #1 The Iraqis were allowed to keep [several tons of low-grad uranium] because it was unfit for weapons use without costly and time-consuming enrichment. And from yesterday's report on this we know that the underground complex, of which the IAEA seems to have been unaware, was adorned with warning signs of "Gas/Gaz". Uranium hexafluoride perhaps? High-spec coated aluminum tubes imported for "rockets"? I'll wager that there's a gas centrifuge enrichment program at some stage of development on site. It's a good thing the IAEA put stickers on all of that nuclear material so the Iraqis couldn't move it a few yards to the probable enrichment facility. |
| Posted by: B. 2003-04-11 02:56:15 |