It Would Take 25-Ten Ton Tractors To Move The YellowCake From Niger

[Me.]

to Iraq. It would have been a monumental task. Are they telling us that with the satellites and all the surveillance that no one would have seen that? And, if they did try to move it in to make their case of WMDs, V. Plame would certainly have caught it.

2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times

Wednesday 18 January 2006

“ Washington - A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department. Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department's intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send "25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers" filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.

The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy.

A handful of news reports, along with the Robb-Silberman report last year on intelligence failures in Iraq, have previously made reference to the early doubts expressed by the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research in 2002 concerning the reliability of the Iraq-Niger uranium link.” Cont…

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011806Z.shtml

[babylonsister]

1. This stinkin' admin knew there were no WMDs and went to war

on that premise anyway. This is as much a smoking gun imo as is the DSM.
Think of the lives lost; it didn't have to happen.

[tridim]

2. It also takes an Oak Ridge scale facility to process it

Oak Ridge is/was the largest manufacturing facility in the world, and it's just one step in the process of making weapons grade materials.

[oneighty]

4. As well as a ready source

of lots of electricity.

180

[ThomWV]

3. It Had Never Occured To Me That People Don't Know What It Is

Yellowcake that is. I just sort of assumed everyone knew what it was.

You see, this isn't something that would find its way into Iraq via a bunch of ninja looking little geeks handcuffed to ominous locked black briefcases. Yellowcake is essentially a crudely refined ore, not yet even a metal. You don't move this shit around in secret, you move it around in dump trucks. It wouldn't hide from satellites well, particularly at interesting border crossing points.

[Me.]

5. That's Why I Did The Thread

because I had no idea it involved such bulk. There is no way this could have been missed, and it adds bulk, size and width to the lie for war and their justification of it.

[H2O Man]

6. Masters of disguise .....

If the boys in the administration had any questions about this, Wilson answered them. They knew that there wasn't a transfer of yellow cake. In fact, Iraq had a supply of yellow cake, which the UN had put under lock and key after the Gulf War. Those who are looking at the possibility that some in the administration's "intel operations" were hoping to "plant" evidence might want to consider all options.

[lectrobyte]

7. They disguised the yellow cake as twinkies and shipped it

in right under our noses.

[frylock]

9. wrapped in a special cia napkin..

</mos_def>

[H2O Man]

11. It's sad to think

that this administration sold the country on a story better suited for "Get Smart."

[Me.]

8. Not To Be "Wormy " About It

But I believe you're right, about the options.

[LincolnMcGrath]

10. K & R