Iraqi Nuclear Sites Were Stripped Methodically

[NATO AIR]

so that means looters didn't do it. so that means another dangerous gaffe during the iraqi war that will come back to haunt us. we go to war to stop saddam's WMD programs and keep him from spreading that stuff to other terrorists and oppressive regimes... but we don't secure the very sites where his henchmen and their allies could steal the nuclear equipment? jesus christ, WTF is wrong with the Pentagon?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&e=10&u=/nm/20041014/wl_nm/nuclear_iraq_dc

World - Reuters

Iraq N-Sites Were Stripped Methodically-Diplomats

Thu Oct 14, 2:24 PM ET World - Reuters

By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA (Reuters) - The mysterious removal of Iraq (news - web sites)'s mothballed nuclear facilities continued long after the U.S.-led invasion and was carried out by people with access to heavy machinery and demolition equipment, diplomats said on Thursday.

The United Nations (news - web sites) nuclear watchdog told the Security Council this week that equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons had been vanishing from Iraq without either Baghdad or Washington noticing.

"This process carried on at least through 2003 ... and probably into 2004, at least in early 2004," said a Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitored Iraq's nuclear sites before last year's war.

That contrasted with statements by Western and Iraqi officials, who have played down the disappearance of the equipment. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday he believed most of the removals took place in the chaos shortly after the March 2003 invasion.

The United States and Britain said they invaded to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Both countries now admit toppled ruler Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had no such weapons.

Several diplomats close to the IAEA said the disappearance of the nuclear items was not the result of haphazard looting.

They said the removal of the dual-use equipment -- which before the war was tagged and closely monitored by the IAEA to ensure it was not being used in a weapons program -- was planned and executed by people who knew what they were doing.

"We're talking about dozens of sites being dismantled," a diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "Large numbers of buildings taken down, warehouses were emptied and removed. This would require heavy machinery, demolition equipment. This is not something that you'd do overnight."

PROLIFERATION FEARS

Diplomats in Vienna say the IAEA is worried that these facilities, which belonged to Saddam's pre-1991 covert nuclear weapons program, could have been packed up and sold to a country or militants interested in nuclear weapons.

The diplomats said that among the sites that had been stripped were a precision manufacturing site at Umm Al Marik, a site connected with Iraq's nuclear weapons activities at Al Qa Qaa and an engineering facility at Badr.

One diplomat said there were "dozens of others" that gradually disappeared from satellite photos analyzed by IAEA experts at its headquarters in Vienna.

Independent expert Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest, said Iraqi nuclear and weapons-related material that was monitored by the U.N. before the invasion had since been found in Europe. Raw "yellowcake" uranium, apparently from Iraq, was found in Rotterdam last December, he said.

"It seems extremely negligent for the authorities in Iraq to allow this quantity of material to have been exported from the country," Standish said.

In 1991, the IAEA detected Saddam's clandestine nuclear weapons program and spent the next seven years investigating and dismantling it. By the time U.N. inspectors left the country in December 1998, Iraq's covert atom bomb program was gone.

After returning in November 2002 until they were evacuated in March 2003, the IAEA was confident none of the dual-use nuclear equipment in Iraq was being used in a weapons program.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff in London)

 

[Avatar4321]

so that means looters didn't do it. so that means another dangerous gaffe during the iraqi war that will come back to haunt us. we go to war to stop saddam's WMD programs and keep him from spreading that stuff to other terrorists and oppressive regimes... but we don't secure the very sites where his henchmen and their allies could steal the nuclear equipment? jesus christ, WTF is wrong with the Pentagon?

What im seriously confused about is why all this double talk? Either Saddam didnt have the capacity to create nuclear weapons or all this equiment wasnt secure. i dont see how you can argue both sides.

 

[NATO AIR]

What im seriously confused about is why all this double talk? Either Saddam didnt have the capacity to create nuclear weapons or all this equiment wasnt secure. i dont see how you can argue both sides.

well i believed (and still do no matter what) he had WMD... he also had facilities that, in the wrong hands, could be used for horrific purposes and designs. the equipment at these facilities was stripped methodically by terrorists, arms traders or saddam loyalists (or some mix of all three) for the express purpose of inflicting mass destruction on the US or one of its allies in the near future.

my beef has always been with the often incompetent leadership of the Pentagon and inside the white house around the president in the conduct of this war. WTF were these sites not among the very first we secured?

 

[dilloduck]

What im seriously confused about is why all this double talk? Either Saddam didnt have the capacity to create nuclear weapons or all this equiment wasnt secure. i dont see how you can argue both sides.

I agree--sounds like double talk to me too. The article isn't really specific enough about who has done the stripping. Perhaps the Iraqis and Americans know full well what has happened to these missing components. Halliburton would be one capable of dismantling these parts for future use in a safer place.