Wikileaks: There was indeed yellowcake uranium in Iraq in 2003.
124 replies, posted
[quote]WikiLeaks' de facto declassification of privileged material makes it case closed: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and intended to restart his program once the heat was off.
President George W. Bush, in the 2003 State of the Union address, uttered the infamous "16 words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson sprang into action and, in an op-ed piece, in effect wrote, "No, the Cheney administration sent me to investigate the allegation -- and I found it without merit."
Put aside that Wilson's CIA-employed wife, not the evil Vice President Dick Cheney -- as Wilson implied -- sent him on the African errand. Put aside that the British still stand by the intelligence on which Bush made the claim. And put aside that the anti-Bush Washington Post, in an editorial, concluded that Wilson had lied about not finding evidence to support the Iraq-in-Africa-for-uranium claim, since he told the CIA the opposite when he reported back from Africa.
Bush claimed that Iraq sought uranium, specifically "yellowcake." What is yellowcake, and why would its presence or attempted acquisition corroborate the nearly unanimous assumption that Saddam possessed WMD?
The Associated Press called yellowcake "the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment" and said that it "also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment."
"Bush and Iraq: Follow the Yellow Cake Road" headlined a euphoric Time magazine July 2003 piece -- written when the Bush administration began backtracking from the Iraq-sought-uranium-from-Africa claim. Time said no yellowcake equals no WMD equals bogus basis for war.
The article led with this ripper: "Is a fib really a fib if the teller is unaware that he is uttering an untruth? That question appears to be the basis of the White House defense, having now admitted a falsehood in President Bush's claim, in his State of the Union address, that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa."
Time hoisted (the now discredited) Joe Wilson on its shoulders as The Man Who Told the Truth to Power: "Just last weekend, the man sent by the CIA to check out the Niger story broke cover and revealed that he had thoroughly debunked the allegation many months before President Bush repeated it."
Never mind that the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Wilson's report "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal" sought by Iraq in Niger.
But ... there ... was ... yellowcake. This brings us back to WikiLeaks.
Wired magazine's contributing editor Noah Shachtman -- a nonresident fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution -- researched the 400,000 WikiLeaked documents released in October. Here's what he found:
"By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."
In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized:
"The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the Now the mainscream media no longer deem yellowcake -- the WMD Bush supposedly lied about -- a WMD. It was, well, old. It was degraded. It was not what we think of when we think of WMD. Really? Square that with what former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said in April 2004: "There were no weapons of mass destruction." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow goes even further, insisting, against the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that "Saddam Hussein was not pursuing weapons of mass destruction"![/quote]
[url=http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2010/12/larry-elder-wikileaks-vindicates-president-george-w-bush]Source 1[/url]
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/africa/07iht-iraq.4.14301928.htm]Source 2[/url]
Considering all the shitstorm that came when it was said there were no weapons of mass destruction or anything, that they didn't even have fissile material then, this might actually make USA look better again.
This might also give Wikileaks a more positive light to the USA goverment, in a way perhaps.
Also, for those that don't know, yellowcake uranium is basically uranium oxide which is then reacted with fluorine to get uranium hexafluoride which goes through processes to end up becoming weapon grade uranium-235.
It's a few days old but I've not been able to find anything on this FP.
Holy Shit.
what if this isnt true and the 'leak' is the work of the republicans
Let's ignore that if the government was open at the time, we'd all be in a better situation.
This was known? Yellowcake is like years and years before you get anywhere near anything like weapons-grade uranium.
yummy cake.
it's times like this that I don't know what to believe anymore.
First off, the Washington Examiner piece you linked to is opinion and says such.
I like how you left out this line to make the guy sound a little more sane:
[quote]Now the [b]mainscream media[/b] no longer deem yellowcake -- the WMD Bush supposedly lied about -- a WMD. [/quote]
From the 2008 NY Times article you linked to:
[quote]Although the material could not be used in its current form for a nuclear weapon or even a so-called dirty bomb, officials decided that in Iraq's unstable environment, it was important to make sure that it did not fall into the wrong hands.
The yellowcake removed from Iraq - [b]which was not the same yellowcake that President George W. Bush claimed, in a now discredited section of his 2003 State of the Union address, that Saddam was trying to purchase in Africa[/b] - could be used in an early stage of the nuclear fuel cycle. Only after intensive processing would it become low-enriched uranium, which could fuel reactors producing power. Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear bombs.[/quote]
This is the same yellowcake that Saddam had sitting around in storage since before 1991. This isn't new.
[editline]14th December 2010[/editline]
Hell, the only sources saying this vindicates Bush are conservative blogs. Got a more reliable source?
I love how people defend wikileaks blindly when it hurts their government, but as soon as they release something that helps the republicans everyone is like "this can't be true" "i don't believe this"
Who's idea was it to name something that can be used to destroy the world into something that sound very delicious, what would happen if someone just happened to come across the recipe for yellowcake in their cookbook and wanted to bake something nice for their friends?
I was right all along! :black101:
Bush claimed in 2003 that Saddam's government was actively seeking yellowcake uranium in Libya for the purposes of restarting Iraq's nuclear weapons program. This is the claim that Joe Wilson called bullshit on.
In 2008, the Americans moved 550 tons of yellowcake that predated the first Persian Gulf War out of Iraq. That's the yellowcake the op-ed piece in the OP refers to. This isn't new. Wikileaks hasn't revealed anything about a restarted WMD program because that program never existed.
[editline]14th December 2010[/editline]
[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;26688472]I love how people defend wikileaks blindly when it hurts their government, but as soon as they release something that helps the republicans everyone is like "this can't be true" "i don't believe this"[/QUOTE]
This "release" is the same thing we learned about in 2008. We knew that Saddam had Gulf-War era stashes of chemical weapons and uranium when we went into Iraq, but Bush and other leaders said that the programs to actually use these weapons had restarted, which this doesn't say anything about.
[editline]14th December 2010[/editline]
[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;26688472]I love how people defend wikileaks blindly when it hurts their government, but as soon as they release something that helps the republicans everyone is like "this can't be true" "i don't believe this"[/QUOTE]
I'm not saying this isn't true, I'm saying that the writer of the OP's opinion piece is confusing an actual program to enrich uranium, which Bush said Saddam had, with a bunch of yellowcake in storage in a bunker.
Can someone PM me and tell me what yellow cake is? then i can write something a little better :buddy:
[QUOTE=MrTwicks;26688536]Can someone PM me and tell me what yellow cake is? then i can write something a little better :buddy:[/QUOTE]
Read the NY Times article from 2008, it does a pretty good job.
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/africa/07iht-iraq.4.14301928.htm[/url]
[QUOTE=Prismatex;26688494]
I'm not saying this isn't true, I'm saying that the writer of the OP's opinion piece is confusing an actual program to enrich uranium, which Bush said Saddam had, with a bunch of yellowcake in storage in a bunker.[/QUOTE]
I wasn't referring to you, half of the posts before yours can be summarized by the word "derp".
[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;26688553]I wasn't referring to you, half of the posts before yours can be summarized by the word "derp".[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Rick Ross;26688244]what if this isnt true and the 'leak' is the work of the republicans[/QUOTE]
I understand now.
[QUOTE=Rick Ross;26688244]what if this isnt true and the 'leak' is the work of the republicans[/QUOTE]
What if you're a retar-oh, wait.
Not to add fuel to the fire but a few months ago wikileaks leaked even more evidence of this WMD crap showing more and more chemical weapons storage and production being found in iraq as well, which DO INDEED constitute WMDs
Not that this even matters seeing as the problem now is not why we went to war, but how do we leave without completely fucking up everyones life down there for the next 50 years.
[QUOTE=Bluesummers;26688595]Not to add fuel to the fire but a few months ago wikileaks leaked even more evidence of this WMD crap showing more and more chemical weapons storage and production being found in iraq as well, which DO INDEED constitute WMDs
[/QUOTE]
That was pre-Wikileaks news. There's a difference between stockpiles from the Persian Gulf War sitting untouched since 1991 and the active WMD programs that Bush talked about. If we knew that the only WMDs in Iraq were stashed away in bunkers to rot, we never would have gone to war.
[QUOTE=Prismatex;26688669]That was pre-Wikileaks news. There's a difference between stockpiles from the Persian Gulf War sitting untouched since 1991 and the active WMD programs that Bush talked about. If we knew that the only WMDs in Iraq were stashed away in bunkers to rot, we never would have gone to war.[/QUOTE]
I hate to be "that guy"
But it talked about WMD production and other such nonsense occurring at the time of the war, not necessarily the old gulf war relics. Anyways, the yellowcake itself does not constitute a WMD but given the intelligence I still do not see how it was so hard to assume they where working on a WMD program.
sources ect.
[url]http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/[/url]
[url]http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/us_did_find_iraq_wmd_AYiLgNbw7pDf7AZ3RO9qnM[/url]
[url]http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/wikileaks-wmd-program-existed-iraq-prior-to-us-invasion[/url]
[quote]The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power.[/quote]
It's not like nuclear power is a far more reliable and efficient source of energy and god forbid if some country in the middle east would like a nuclear power-plant in case something were to happen to the oil.
[QUOTE=Bluesummers;26688727]I hate to be "that guy"
But it talked about WMD production and other such nonsense occurring at the time of the war, not necessarily the old gulf war relics. Anyways, the yellowcake itself does not constitute a WMD but given the intelligence I still do not see how it was so hard to assume they where working on a WMD program.
sources ect.
[url]http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/[/url]
[url]http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/us_did_find_iraq_wmd_AYiLgNbw7pDf7AZ3RO9qnM[/url]
[url]http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/wikileaks-wmd-program-existed-iraq-prior-to-us-invasion[/url][/QUOTE]
The first article is about leftover chemical weapons in use by Iraqi insurgents. Again, no evidence of a continuing WMD program, just insurgents making use of old chemical weapons from Saddam's regime.
The second article has the same information as the Wired article.
Same story with the third.
None of these articles say anything about a program of chemical weapons production between the end of the Gulf war and the 2003 invasion - rather, they simply say what we already know, that insurgents got their hands on old Gulf War WMD stockpiles.
[QUOTE=Rick Ross;26688244]what if this isnt true and the 'leak' is the work of the republicans[/QUOTE]
"The leak didn't say something bad about the US so therefore this must be a fake leak by the republicans"
[QUOTE=Prismatex;26688790]The first article is about leftover chemical weapons in use by Iraqi insurgents. Again, no evidence of a continuing WMD program, just insurgents making use of old chemical weapons from Saddam's regime.
The second article has the same information as the Wired article.
Same story with the third.
None of these articles say anything about a program of chemical weapons production between the end of the Gulf war and the 2003 invasion - rather, they simply say what we already know, that insurgents got their hands on old Gulf War WMD stockpiles.[/QUOTE]
[quote]But it talked about WMD production and other such nonsense occurring at the time of the war, not necessarily the old gulf war relics.[/quote]
[QUOTE=Bluesummers;26689007][/QUOTE]
[quote]Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.[/quote]
We know for sure that the insurgents took advantage of Saddam's stockpiles.
We don't know for sure that they were able to produce chemical weapons of their own, but the evidence points to it.
That distinction doesn't really matter, anyway. Yes, there may have been WMD production in Iraq after the US invasion, but there was no production between the Gulf War and the US invasion. The OP's article claims that Wikileaks "vindicates" Bush, which it in no way does.
cake
Yellow Cake isn't even a WMD or anything close to it, hell it's hardly even a threat besides the slight radiation. If you knew where to go you could buy yellow cake wholesale back before the nuke (my grandfather had some under his bed as a teenager which he used for experiments.)
[QUOTE=SM0K3 B4N4N4;26690566]Yellow Cake isn't even a WMD or anything close to it, hell it's hardly even a threat besides the slight radiation. If you knew where to go you could buy yellow cake wholesale back before the nuke (my grandfather had some under his bed as a teenager which he used for experiments.)[/QUOTE]
Which explains why every subsequent generation of his is a low-functioning retard
[QUOTE=Jookia;26688251]Let's ignore that if the government was open at the time, we'd all be in a better situation.[/QUOTE]
so sad :(
I've known this, my uncle is in the military and I somehow 'acquired' that information from him, so no bush was not wrong about weapons of mass destruction.
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