Updated Below
They really are like simple, but nasty, children.
Long, long ago, in those heady days just after the invasion of Iraq but before it all went sour — a very narrow period, to be sure — some Marines stumbled upon the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program, at a site near Tuwaitha that had been bombed into rubble by Israel back in 1981. A whole lot of yellowcake uranium was stored there, all of which had been inspected and re-inspected by the IAEA many times over the years.
In fact, the IAEA had inspected the site several times before the Iraq War began in March 2003. The last inspection was on February 11, 2003. United Nations weapons inspectors had visited the facility in December, 2002. The yellowcake was all inventoried and stored in drums with IAEA seals. I wrote a lot about this back in 2003.
The critical point is that Saddam Hussein couldn’t do anything with this uranium because he lacked the equipment and technology to enrich it. So it had been sitting around for years in drums sealed by the IAEA. No nuclear program.
When the Marines found this cache of uranium in April, 2003, they were completely caught off guard. If anyone in the Bush Administration knew it was there, they didn’t bother to inform the military. So for a while the uranium became the vindication for the invasion, until finally someone admitted that, um, yeah, we knew it was there, and it was all still under IAEA seal as it had been for several years. No vindication.
The amusing part of all this is that every single time some part of that yellowcake uranium gets back into the news, the wingnuts get all excited about the “new” discovery and start celebrating that the invasion of Iraq is vindicated. This seems to happen every 18 months or so.
Well, folks, they’re at it again. There’s an Associated Press story (that I’m not linking to because it’s the Associated Press) that says the last of the yellowcake was removed from the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex. And they seem to think this is some brand new discovery.
Here’s the Idiot’s Hall of Fame:
American Thinker
Don Surber
Gateway Pundit
Pirate’s Cove
Neptunus Lex
Patterico’s Pontifications
Sweetness and Light
The accumulated IQ of the above bloggers adds up to about 47.
See also Daniel DeGroot, who is not an idiot.
Update: Here’s another candidate for the Idiot’s Hall of Fame — Macsmind. That takes the accumulated Idiot IQ up to about 48.
Sample quote:
Of course Yellow Cake is harmless in itself but then it’s only a few steps away from becoming uranium.
Yellowcake IS uranium and is radioactive, but you can’t make weapons with it. It is not “only a few steps” from being weapons grade. It takes considerable refinement and considerable time, and it’s clear that Saddam Hussein lacked the means to refine it and wasn’t trying.
This story of course blows the Bush Lied/People Died story out of the water and puts to rest any question whether Saddam was seeking to build a nuclear program. In fact we know that Saddam did in fact have a WMD program.
Yellowcake uranium that had been stored in sealed drums for several years with no attempt to do anything with it does not constitute a “WMD program.”
Update: One more for the Idiot’s list:
This may push the collective IQ number above 50. It’s so hard to tell.
Update: Now Patterico Justine Levine, writing at Patterico’s Pontifications, says I am missing the point.
The debate isn’t about if Saddam was on the verge of obtaining nukes or not. Rather, it is about the fact that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are liars – something that most of the press refuses to acknowledge. Notably, Mahablog doesn’t mention the Joe Wilson controversy at all.
Please. The yellowcake in Tuwaitha is completely unrelated to Joe Wilson. The Tuwaitha yellowcake was [partly] the remnants of material from the defunct Osiraq reactor that Israel bombed in 1981 [the rest was purchased before the Gulf War]. The Tuwaitha yellowcake had been sitting in those drums, with the IAEA seals, at least since the end of the Gulf War. The IAEA had exhaustively inventoried it and monitored it from the beginning of the 1990s until inspections stopped in 1998, and when they went back in 2003 they found nothing whatsoever had changed — nothing had been added, nothing had been taken away. The same barrels were still there, with the same seals.
Wilson’s trip to Niger in 2002 was to investigate an alleged sale of uranium in the late 1990s. The alleged Niger uranium had nothing whatsoever to do with the Tuwaitha uranium.
In fact, one of my arguments all along about the 16 words and the alleged Niger yellowcake was that it made no sense for Saddam Hussein to purchase more yellowcake when he was already sitting on a huge pile of yellowcake that he didn’t have the technology to enrich.
Patterico just went into negative IQ points. The accumulated IQ drops to 38.
What was Saddam doing with all that spare yellowcake for so many years when he didn’t have any nuclear programs?
Oh, nevermind.
daleyrocks — Dear Idiot — he wasn’t doing anything with it. It had been stored in barrels for several years with unbroken IAEA seals. I explained that several times in the post.
In order to have “done something” with it, he would have had to have broken the seals and removed the yellowcake, and then put it through an elaborate processing that he didn’t have the equipment to put into effect.
And because I anticipate being infested with other mouth-breathing troglodytes who can’t read, I believe I will close comments on this post.
All — I’ll allow comments again, just so see what happens, but I hope those of you who are Mahablog regulars will take on the job of shoveling scorn and derision on the wingnuts who are dense enough to actually comment here. I’m really busy today and don’t have time to do it myself.
Also, wingnuts, note that comments are moderated. You may see your comment posted, but nobody else but me sees them until I approve them. Any comments that consist entirely of snark will be deleted. If you have an actual argument that makes sense (I’m not holding my breath) I will allow it to be posted.
You’ve hit the “big time” — Patterico’s next move will be to assign homework to his readers.
Keep in mind that Malkin is his hero and you begin to understand his logic. Pretty soon he will be using the phrase “Some have cast doubts…”
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Maha is absolutely right.
In order for Saddam to convert the yellowcake into usable uranium, he would have needed high-strength aluminum tubes to build centrifuges. Of course, these types of tubes were forbidden under UN sanctions, so it was impossible for him to obtain them.
We should send Joe Wilson to Canada to see if if the Canadian attempted to buy yellowcake from Iraq. He can lie again, say no, and become even more popular with the left.
Maha is still probably right. (a slight correction)
Apparently, Saddam did obtain and had on order aluminum tubes of ever tightening tolerances.
No matter.
Saddam could not build centrifuges without first obtaining rare-earth magnets for use in the magnetic bearing assemblies. So regardless of Saddam’s innocent possession of yellowcake and aluminum tubes, without the right magnets he couldn’t possibly be accused of having desired nuclear weapons.
Saddam could not build centrifuges without first obtaining rare-earth magnets for use in the magnetic bearing assemblies. So regardless of Saddam’s innocent possession of yellowcake and aluminum tubes, without the right magnets he couldn’t possibly be accused of having desired nuclear weapons.
Of course he desired nuclear weapons. I desire ten million dollars. I desire to look like Charlize Theron . We all desire things that ain’t gonna happen. Desiring nuclear weapons isn’t cause to go to war unless there is a reasonable expectation the desire can be filled, and on that score Saddam Hussein might as well have desired to look like Charlize Theron. He was so far away from nuclear weapons it isn’t funny. Really.
And don’t get started on the aluminum tubes.
(Scorn? Derision? Help me out here, troops.)
It’s true, in a narrow sense, that Ambassador Wilson’s New York Times article claimed only that he found no evidence that Iraq was, at the time or in he recent past, actively seeking “yellowcake” purchases from Niger; he said nothing about any uranium already in Iraq.
My question has always been: if Ambassador Wilson was so offended by the infamous “sixteen words,” why didn’t he say something then, several weeks before the invasion, when maybe it could have actually done something? Mr Wilson had previously published articles in which he had said that yeah, Saddam Hussein was a bad, bad guy, but that we shouldn’t go to war over that, so his mind wasn’t suddenly changed by the State of the Union speech.
Even before that, the vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq came up when the Democrats had control of the Senate; he could have gone to Senator Daschle or Senator Kennedy or Senator Leahy with his information, but he never did.
Instead, Mr Wilson waited until 3½ months after the invasion — when he could be pretty sure that facts on the ground wouldn’t prove him wrong — to write his New York Times article. Since we couldn’t then “uninvade” Iraq, the only purpose at that point could have been to weaken George Bush and the Administration politically.
Which was, of course, his sole purpose; let’s be honest about that.
My question has always been: if Ambassador Wilson was so offended by the infamous “sixteen words,†why didn’t he say something then, several weeks before the invasion, when maybe it could have actually done something?
Good question. I dimly recall Wilson addressed that issue at some point, but I don’t remember what he said.
Since we couldn’t then “uninvade†Iraq, the only purpose at that point could have been to weaken George Bush and the Administration politically.
Which was, of course, his sole purpose; let’s be honest about that.
IMO the Bush Administration is an evil monstrosity that shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near Washington DC, much less given power. Any attempt to show the American people what frauds and liars the Bushies were and are is an act of patriotism in my book.
Maha: I would love to help you out but I do not know enough about the subject to comment intelligently. However, since I had no clue as to who Charlize Theron was, I did a search and have to say, she is pretty in an all fluff, no substance kind of way. I saw you on C-Span and think you look just fine.
…the only purpose at that point could have been to weaken George Bush and the Administration politically.
Which was, of course, his sole purpose; let’s be honest about that.
To build on what maha said, it depends on how you view the Bush administration. If they’re just a run-of-the-mill administration, with our country’s best interests at heart, then yes, Wilson’s only purpose is as you state. If Bush et. al. is a cancer on our country, destroying its institutions and bankrupting it in several dimensions, then Wilson’s purpose is to literally save our country. Let’s be honest about that.
Because this administration is so radically different from anything that came before it in living memory, it can take awhile to see this, accept it, and to formulate a response. Much of the country still hasn’t gone through this process, it’s still sleep walking through what’s left of the American Dream. The slow motion crash of our economy is only just beginning to rouse those who are still asleep.
Speaking for myself, I knew, before the Iraq War began, that it was based on lies. I knew this in my gut. And yet, all around me, in the media and in the people surrounding me at work, nearly everyone was sucking down the flag in a mindless patriotic fever. The cognitive dissonance – between what I knew internally to be true versus what was going on all around me – was enough to make me question my sanity at times. I can’t say specifically what was going on with Joe Wilson at that time, but I can understand a delay before he spoke up. Some people have yet to speak up, years later.
“Because this administration is so radically different from anything that came before it in living memory . . .”
The Bush admin was evil and horrible because it did all of these evil and horrible things that it turns out it really didn’t do and that outraged Dems mostly made up because, true or not, they were consistent with and representative of all of the other evil and horrible things that the Bush admin did but really didn’t do, and sometimes when explaining to the unknowing public just how evil and horrible an admin can be, one can honorably simply make up easy-to-understand examples of evilness and horribility because the other made-up examples are too technical or complicated to understand.
Did I get that right?
Now I have a headache.
that it turns out it really didn’t do
So far it’s pretty much been guilty of everything it’s been accused of, as near as I recall. There’ve been no real exonerations, just escapes. And we probably don’t know the half of it.
Now I have a headache.
You have a head?
maha said:
“And we probably don’t know the half of it”
I have to agree, but I think you give yourself too much credit by assuming you know “half of it”. 😉
And I’ve seen better “scorn and derision” at a second grade soccer game. “You have a head?” ?!?!
“Bush lied!”
Well, no he didn’t. Even Rockefeller agrees with this now.
“Bush said the danger from SH was imminent!”
Well, no he didn’t. Read just about all of his speeches in the six months leading up to the invasion.
“Bush said SH had nukes!”
Well, no he didn’t. Bush said that SH had used other WMDs (on his own people, even), that SH had in the past expended much effort in developing WMDs, and that indications were that he would pursue that effort again.
“Bush’s tax cuts only help his rich friends.”
Well, no, it’s a fairly well-accepted theory, empirically supported, that removing fewer “tax” dollars from the pockets of the people who actually pay taxes leaves those dollars to be spent on . . . something . . . which means that the makers of that . . . something . . . can then go out and buy more of other . . . . somethings . . . and the makers of those other . . . somethings . . . can then . . . . et cetera, et cetera . . . which means that more people are working to produce . . . somethings . . . more taxes are being paid on their wages and their purchases, all of which results in both higher incomes for many, and higher tax reciepts.
“Bush is a far-right extremist.”
Well, no, most Repubs who lost confidence in him did so because he moved so far towards the left side of the spectrum. He’s spent money madly in pursuit of vague feelings of correctness along with the best of the Dems. He pushed for Kennedy’s NCLB, he pushed a costly new Medicare drug program, he thinks borders are simply lines that tell you where you are an a map . . . Heck, he’s Bill Clinton writ Texan.
“Bush has a religious zealot’s hatred for gays.”
Well, no, Bush has outspent all other presidents by a huge margin in his fight against AIDs, with a special emphasis on AIDs in Africa. He’s appointed more openly gay people to government positions in this fight than anyone, even WJC.
Point is, just as the right got it wrong about Clinton – he really was a centrist after all – the left gets it wrong about Bush.
“You have a head?”
Can I write that off as a quick lapse, and not an indication of the general level of debate here?
And I’ve seen better “scorn and derision†at a second grade soccer game. “You have a head?†?!?!
I apologize; that wasn’t up to my usual snark standards.
re: …only a few steps away…
Just like I could be an astronaut: I’m only 50 miles away from outer space. If I could drive my Chrysler straight up, I’d be in outspace in less than an hour.
Teh stupid. It burns!!!!11!!
outspace: should be outer space.
Sorry for the typo, folks.
Hey, Bobby b, think real hard about this: WHY did the Bush administration insist that we go to war with Iraq? WHAT was the reason that poor old Colin Powell was given to peddle to the UN? And, if you can figure out the answer to that question (hint: it had to do with the imminence of the danger that Saddam’s weapons program presented to the U.S.), then answer me this: Did your boy W really believe in the reason that he peddled to us and to the world? Think real hard, now…
(Comment deleted. And no, life ain’t fair. Deal with it. — Maha)
I find this pretty amusing.
What I would like to know, Maha, is what exactly are your qualifications in regards to nuclear energy and weapons and perhaps what exactly are your qualifications to comment on the foreign policy of this government? You seem to be quite adapt and insulting people and questioning their IQs, but I most certainly have not read a thing that leads me to believe you are any smarter or more informed than the typical I hate America blogger. You have your little echo chamber here where you all collectively congratulate yourselves, but just criticizing Bush does not make you smart.
I really am hoping for an answer.
Maha wrote:
Even if it might have weakened our policies, and our troops in the field, perhaps leading to more of them getting killed?
The American people had an opportunity to pass judgement on President Bush, more than a year after Mr Wilson’s article was published; by a solid majority, the voters re-elected him.
Delaney Dean wrote, expressing what many others here seem to believe:
Yes, I’d say he did. I just finished Valerie Wilson’s book Fair Game. If anyone has an axe to grind against the Administration, it would be Valerie Wilson. Yet, if you read her book, you’ll see that she says that her entire division — the Counterproliferation Division within the Directorate of Operations — believed that yes, Iraq had banned weapons. She noted that they were worried sick when the invasion began about the chemical weapons they expected Iraq to use against our soldiers.
I’ll have a rather lengthy (4,400 words) book review of Mrs Wilson’s book published in a few days; I’ll send y’all the link when it is.
What I would like to know, Maha, is what exactly are your qualifications in regards to nuclear energy and weapons and perhaps what exactly are your qualifications to comment on the foreign policy of this government?
I did a hell of a lot of research awhile back and learned lots of basic stuff, like exactly what yellowcake uranium is and what has to be done to make it into weapons-grade material. This information is not hard to find.
what exactly are your qualifications to comment on the foreign policy of this government?
I’m a citizen.
Even if it might have weakened our policies, and our troops in the field, perhaps leading to more of them getting killed?
I would never do anything that might bring soldiers into harm. However, the Bush Administration seems less restrained.
I realize you righties operate on a “My Government Uber Alles” level, but some of us think patriotism means speaking out when your government is wrong. And the Bush Administration has violated just about everything good and honorable this country ever stood for.
The American people had an opportunity to pass judgement on President Bush, more than a year after Mr Wilson’s article was published; by a solid majority, the voters re-elected him.
It wasn’t that solid. It was Ohio. And yes, people are easily hoodwinked when news media isn’t doing its job, which is usually the case.
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