Artful Dodger: But it's not from wikileaks .... it's from

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/12/09/the_wikileaks_vindication_of_george_w_bush_108195.html




Saddam's nuclear arsenal? A scattering of yellow powder

Villagers sell deadly uranium to the US army at $3 a barrel

* Patrick Graham in Al Mansia
* The Observer, Sunday 5 October 2003 01.41 BST
* Article history

Dhia Ali makes a throwing motion as he tells how he dumped out the blue barrels of powder. The nine-year-old and his brother, Hussein, weren't looking for weapons of mass destruction when they went into the low brown buildings, known to UN weapons inspectors as Location C, near his home last April. They just wanted the blue barrels.

The yellow cake powder they poured out and breathed into their lungs - a form of natural uranium - was part of the nuclear programme which, the Iraq Survey Group's recent report claims, somewhat vaguely, was being restarted before the last war. The report won't do much for Dhia or Hussein - they haven't even been examined by a doctor yet.

'If you inhale even a small amount, it stays in your lungs,' said one of the senior scientists who worked on Iraq's atomic programme. He spoke anonymously because, like many of the country's best researchers, he didn't want any trouble from the Americans.

Even the ducks in the canal in the village of Al Mansia, where they dumped the barrels, later tested for increased radiation. When the US army offered a reward of $3 a barrel, the villagers fished them out and sold them.

The report's claim that Iraq was revamping its nuclear programme in such a way that it could constitute any serious threat was described as 'ridiculous' by the scientist. By 1991, when the he left the programme, Iraq had succeeded in producing no more than one kilogram of enriched uranium - 6 to 14 kgs short of a bomb. By 1997, the programme had been exposed and most of its capabilities destroyed.

To produce more would be impossible. Nuclear research, he pointed out, is a massive undertaking and difficult to conceal, especially under sanctions while being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/05/iraq1