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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Nuclear arms reportedly found in Iraq |
| 2004-07-21 |
| MAJOR GRAINS OF SALT: Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday. Did not know the IP had a nuke team. Kinda doubt they do. The official daily al-Sabah quoted the sources as saying the missiles were discovered in trenches near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "The three missiles were discovered by chance when the Iraqi security forces captured former Baath party official Khoder al-Douri who revealed during interrogation the location of the missiles saying they carried nuclear heads," the sources said. When?! They pointed out that the missiles were actually discovered in the trenches lying under six meters of concrete and designed in a way to unable sophisticated sensors from discovering nuclear radiation. The sources said al-Douri, who is related to former Vice Chairman of the Iraq Revolution Council and Saddam's right-hand man Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was captured after Iraqi police intercepted an e-mail message in which he set a meeting with another former Baath official. Did not know the IP could intercept emails, though they may have had some tech support from the US. The report could not be authenticated by the interior ministry or the national security department, but the paper noted Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiar Zibari made a surprise request recently to Mohammed el-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to resume inspections for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq If he was serious about finding nukes, el-Baradei is the last guy he'd call. |
| Posted by:JAB |
| #17 DPA - I should have said that I only wanted to left to have to eat crow. I agree with you - if its true, the world is allot dangerous. |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2004-07-21 2:22:49 PM |
| #16 Not saying this is necessarily true but .... We're nearly certain that Saddam quickly disassembled and moved WMD equipment/programs just before and perhaps even during the early phases of the war. It's entirely conceivable that he'd dig a trench & pour concrete over the top of the crown jewels of his WMD program, particularly if the reports of the insurgency being his prewar plan for regaining power are true. Or he might just have been hiding them from UN inspectors, rather than from the invading forces. While the weapons would degrede w/o maintenance, degradation to a non-functional state might well take years. But even if components of the weapons did degrade to the point where the weapon wasn't usable as-is, it's likely that the nuclear pit at the heart of the weapon would remain useful and that's the one piece that's still difficult to obtain. Depending on the size and enrichment of the pit and the quality of its airtight casing, it might be decades, centuries, or even longer before the pit became unusable. Even the fact that the proverbial al-Mayberry Gazzette broke the story might tend to increase rather than decrease the likelihood that it's true. Iraq is filled with terrorists, terrorists who'd dearly love to have access to WMD, and any story confirming caches is likely to set off a massive treasure hunt that we'd rather avoid (IMHO this is why we've been spiking every WMD story that's come along). It's entirely possible that al Mayberry Gazzette was small enough to be beneath the radar and hadn't been read the riot act on that point. Besides this is a spectacular story if true and the mainstream press and possibly even the larger local press would be highly skeptical without official confirmation. It also doesn't give me much heartburn that the prewar intel that's leaked into the public domain didn't include mention of these alleged warheads. Anybody really believe that our alphabet soup agencies really pour all of their knowledge out to the public? Me either. And even if they did, they've been caught seemingly flat-footed WRT the state of advancement of several WMD programs, most recently Libya. And we're talking about a handful of warheads here, not the infrastructure necessary to support their production. The former could easily be hidden from prying eyes, the latter less so and we've seemingly missed the scope of the latter on numerous occasions in other localities lately. Credible? Maybe but we'll never know. This one will quickly vanish into the fog of war (or whatever the equivalent is in a nominally post-war state). |
| Posted by: AzCat 2004-07-21 2:03:54 PM |
| #15 Yosemite Sam, You really hope you're wrong?!? If it turned out Iraq had nukes the US is in SERIOUS danger... |
| Posted by: Damn_Proud_American 2004-07-21 1:38:49 PM |
| #14 Sure the report of Nukes is fishy but does that mean they didn't find 3 missles with interesting looking warheads? |
| Posted by: danking70 2004-07-21 12:50:05 PM |
| #13 Iraqi officials say the report of nukes is stupid http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1847-2004Jul21.html |
| Posted by: mhw 2004-07-21 10:46:06 AM |
| #12 P.S. - I REALLY hope I'm wrong though |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2004-07-21 10:44:02 AM |
| #11 I don't believe this. If it were true - we wouldn't be getting the info from the Al-Mayberry Gazzette. Move along...... |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2004-07-21 10:13:00 AM |
| #10 apparently the paper is a local Iraqi paper. The name is a coincidence. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-07-21 10:08:51 AM |
| #9 The report has already been debunked. But, no if you bury nukes and don't maintain them then they go bad relatively quickly. The radiation leakage from the nuclear material damages the warhead. |
| Posted by: Damn_Proud_American 2004-07-21 9:55:32 AM |
| #8 oops - I missed this - looked on PG 1 - please delete my post |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-07-21 9:49:06 AM |
| #7 almost certainly these were not nuclear bombs but they may have had uranium or thorium mixed with explosives |
| Posted by: mhw 2004-07-21 9:48:29 AM |
| #6 Whoa baby. If this pans out, we'll see a show of wild scrambling on the Dems part-"no,we were for the war if there were weapons" Dumb question-What happens to nukes when you put them under six meters of concrete? If Saddam hadn't fallen, could he have dug them up, good as new? |
| Posted by: jules 187 2004-07-21 9:42:32 AM |
| #5 The official daily al-Sabah So that would be the Kuwaiti official daily, I take it? There are worse sources, but yeah, Id take this with salt. Agree with RC that buried under concrete is credible. Cite for ODA's quote from Iraqi Interior Ministry. Also agree its probably nothing - prewar intell indicated a nuclear program, but not that they had warheads. This seems like a distraction from the real shocker, which is confirmation that they WERE seeking African Uranium. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-07-21 9:41:11 AM |
| #4 While the story's probably nothing, remember that Saddam figured we'd never invade, and that if we did, his fedayeen would kill a few soldiers and chase us right back out. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-07-21 9:36:44 AM |
| #3 The Iraqi Interior ministry called the report stupid |
| Posted by: Ol_Dirty_American 2004-07-21 9:36:00 AM |
| #2 Seems to violate military logic to have your missiles buried under concrete when your enemy is rolling tanks across the border. Then again, Saddam was a real genius of rare nature... |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2004-07-21 9:33:27 AM |
| #1 Why is this page two? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-07-21 9:32:15 AM |