I heard on a highly suspect radio show this morning that evidence of WMDs had been discovered in Iraq, specifically 1.7 metric tons of enriched uranium that could have been made into bombs and 1500 gallons of chemical weapons. One of the reasons I’m highly suspicious is because it’s not getting reported in the news (the talk show hosts said something about the Vast Media Conspiracy[sup]TM[/sup] - not in those exact words.
What are they talking about and is there any independent corraboration of this new find?
This is the same 1.7 tonnes that the IAEA allowed them to keep in 1991? The NCI knew about that in 1999. It’s one of those thigs that the inspectors were looking at.
I remember hearing that we found huge quantities of pesticides that could be quickly converted into chemical weapons, but no actual weaponized chemicals. (Pesticides are basically just chemical weapons for bugs. Changing them into chemical weapons for humans is a fairly trivial step.)
There is a new book out by Richard Miniter called “Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror,” which makes the claims you’re talking about. I haven’t read it, and I don’t know anything about the author. I got an email a week or so ago with an article and link to his website.
I don’t know if it’s true or not, but here are some names and dates and whatnot from the article:
Excerpt:
"Yet, in July 2004, the U.S. government announced it had transferred the nearly 2 tons of enriched uranium found in Iraq to an undisclosed location in the United States.
The uranium was what was left of supplies looted when the Iraqi facility was left unguarded between the retreat of Saddam Hussein’s forces and the advance of U.S. forces.
The airlift was completed June 23, five days before the U.S.-led Coalition Authority transferred the sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government.
The uranium was from the Tuwaitha nuclear facility, about 20 kilometers south of Baghdad. It was once a premium Iraqi facility for development of nuclear weapons but was dismantled in 1990s after the first Gulf war. The facility is now under the control of the new Iraqi interim government.
It was not clear where exactly the uranium is being kept, but American Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham described its removal as a “major achievement” in the Bush administration’s goal of keeping “potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists.”
“It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons,” Abraham said in a statement.
In a letter to the Security Council, IAEA Director General Mohammad El Baradei confirmed the transfer, saying that about 1.8 tonnes of uranium enriched to the level of 2.6 per cent had been transferred June 23 along with 6.6 pounds of low enriched uranium and about 1,000 highly radioactive sources."
1500 gallons of chemical weapons. Except they wern’t chemical weapons, they were unamed precursors. Precurors can be simple, readily availble compounds such as insecticides. Apparently the lab where they were found were new (post invasion).
A quick search with Google shows that he tends to write for conservative-leaning publications, such as the Washington Times, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. He’s also written books like “Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror” and “Shadow War:
The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror”.
Mr. Miniter’s credibility is left as an exercise for the reader.
Thanks for the info, folks. I knew people here would know something about it.
Can I assume from Tapioca’s links that the uranium was insufficiently enriched to be used in a nuclear weapon? It says they removed uranium enriched as low as 10% in 1994, and the uranium in this case was enriched to 2.6%. I don’t know how enriched it has to be to be used in a fission weapon.
If it was insufficiently enriched, Mr. Miniter delibrately implied the opposite on the radio show.
As far as enrichment, it depends on the isotope of uranium you are talking about. For U-235:
Check This site for more info See section 6.2.1.1 for the above quote. It also talks about U-233 and others. Other sections probably have more than you’ll ever want to know about fission, fusion, and fission/fusion physics. The math isn’t too bad.
I agree with your sentence literally, but disagree with the general sentiment.
To an extent, just about any chemical can be classified as a “chemical weapons” precursor if you have a vivid imagination. Given the proper incentive, I bet I could take an inventory of any American house and make a case for the owners having chemical weapons precursors. Got an extra smoke detector lying around? Stockpiling radioactive materials for a dirty bomb! Bleach and ammonia? Precursors to generating chemical weapons! Fertilizer for your garden and some extra gas for your lawnmower? Gasoline bomb maker apprehended!
The problem with making chemical weapons is that you need to make them without killing yourself, which is, of course, why production facilities are few and far between. That someone had 1500 pounds of insecticide doesn’t scare me in the least – I’d be far more scared of someone with 1 pound of precursor material and a state-of-the-art laboratory.
Look at the sarin attacks on the Japanese subway: you would think that sarin gas released on the subway would have been a worst-case scenario – potent nerve gas in a crowded, enclosed space! Yet it was remarkably impotent because they couldn’t disperse it without sophisticated technology.
In general, Americans overestimate the effectiveness and underestimate the difficulty in making chemical weapons. The importance of finding unenriched uranium and chemical weapons “precursors” have been generally overstated.