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Just saw excerpts from Kerry's speech on the Newshour. He noted that the Iraq war distracted the admin from securing nuclear materials in Russia and other places. I wonder if he is aware of the LOOTING that was ALLOWED to happen at the known nuclear sites in Iraq, most notably at TUWAITHA. Dear Senator Kerry, Please ask George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz why they did nothing to secure the Iraqi nuclear sites in the first weeks of the war. After all those threats about mushroom clouds, they did not even make the pretense of guarding radioactive materials in Iraq. They let them be stolen, for weeks. But they DID guard the Oil Ministry. Bush made his priorities clear just this afternoon:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040601-2.html
Q Mr. President, can I ask about one of the things that the new Prime Minister in Iraq has said about your administration? He has said that many of the postwar problems in Iraq have been from lack of proper planning, and that America bears direct responsibility for that. How do you answer that?
THE PRESIDENT: I would answer him that we had a plan in place, we succeeded in making sure that the oil flow continues so that he as Prime Minister has now got roughly 2.5 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil for the benefit of the Iraqi people, that there wasn't major disruptions of food, so that people didn't starve. In other words, we were very successful in certain things.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ About Tuwaitha:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39500-2003Aug9?language=printer
In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.
<snip>The day after publication of Card's marketing remark, Bush and nearly all his top advisers began to talk about the dangers of an Iraqi nuclear bomb.
Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair conferred at Camp David that Saturday, Sept. 7, and they each described alarming new evidence. Blair said proof that the threat is real came in "the report from the International Atomic Energy Agency this morning, showing what has been going on at the former nuclear weapon sites." Bush said "a report came out of the . . . IAEA, that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."
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http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/iraq.debate/
Rice acknowledged that "there will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon but said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. - G. Bush, 10/7/02
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http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6068775.htm
Looting of Iraqi nuclear facility indicts U.S. goals
If we feared the loss of radioactive materials, why not guard them?
TRUDY RUBIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Posted on Thu, Jun. 12, 2003
TUWAITHA, Iraq - On a dusty road, just outside of Baghdad, lies one of the great mysteries of the Iraq war.
<snip>The administration knew full well what was stored at Tuwaitha. So how is it possible that the U.S. military failed to secure the nuclear facility until weeks after the war started? This left looters free to ransack the barrels, dump their contents, and sell them to villagers for storage.
How is it possible that, according to Iraqi nuclear scientists, looters are still stealing radioactive isotopes? The Tuwaitha story makes a mockery of the administration's vaunted concern with weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. military hastened to secure the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad from looters. But Iraq's main nuclear facility was apparently not important enough to get similar protection.
<snip>And why, in facilities other than Location C, is the looting apparently continuing? Hisham Abdel Malik, a Iraqi nuclear scientist who lives near Tuwaitha and has been inside the complex, told me that in buildings "where there are radioactive isotopes, there is looting every day." He says the isotopes, which are in bright silver containers, "are sold in the black market or kept in homes." According to IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, such radioactive sources can kill on contact or pollute whole neighborhoods.
How could an administration that had hyped the danger of Saddam handing off nuclear materials to terrorists let Tuwaitha be looted? Maybe the hype was just hype ... or maybe the Pentagon didn't send enough troops to Iraq to do the job right.
Either answer is damning.<more>
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http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20030716_192.html
U.N. in Dark About Looted Iraq Dirty Bomb Material
July 16
By Louis Charbonneau
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said Wednesday it had accounted for most of the low-grade uranium lost during looting at Iraq's main nuclear facility, but had no information about more dangerous radioactive material.
<snip>But an IAEA spokeswoman said the agency had not been permitted by U.S. occupation authorities to check the status of Tuwaitha's stocks of highly-radioactive cesium-137, cobalt-160 and other materials which could be used in dirty bombs.
"There were around 400 of these radioactive sources stored at Tuwaitha," IAEA's Melissa Fleming said.
Witnesses have said that villagers near Tuwaitha, especially children, have shown symptoms of radiation sickness.
"Any case of radiation sickness would probably be from these highly-radioactive sources, not from the low-grade natural uranium at Location C," Fleming said.<more>
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http://www.counterpunch.org/schwarz07172003.html
July 17, 2003
Bush's Pre-emptive Strike Doctrine
The Bane of Non-Proliferation Watchdogs
By MARTIN SCHWARZ
<snip>Bush's use of the specter of nuclear threat to legitimate his intimidation policy can also been seen as just another excuse if reports from occupied post-war Iraq are taken into account. When the reports about massive looting in Iraq's biggest nuclear facility Al-Tuwaitha emerged after the war, the U.S. administration rejected the IAEA's request to send inspectors to that facility for more than a month. El-Baradei didn't even get an answer to his letters to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Meanwhile, strange things must have happened in Al-Tuwaitha: The IAEA in Vienna received several phone calls from U.S. soldiers based at the facility to secure it, who didn't know what to do with nuclear material they had found.<more>
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http://www.sierrasun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030718/OPINION/307180301
July 18, 2003
Bush's actions don't match the rhetoric
Guest Column by Kirk Caraway
<snip>Turn back the clock to the before the war. You "know" your enemy has 100-500 tons of chemical weapons, and you know where he is likely hiding them. Wouldn't you try to secure those sites as quickly as possible? After all, these chemical weapons posed a major threat to our advancing troops, and the big danger, they said, was if these fall into the hands of terrorists.
So why wasn't this done? Special Forces teams were flown into Iraq to secure the oil fields, but not the weapons. That speaks volumes about what the real reason for the war is.
And those weapons are still missing. Rumsfeld claims they are doing their best to search all those sites, but this is disconcerting. How many days have his 150,000 soldiers had to search the sites they already know about?
And what about the nukes? If Bush and his people really thought that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, why did the military wait for more than a week after taking over the region to even visit the country's main nuclear research facilities at Tuwaitha?
Why did they wait even longer to visit the neighboring Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility? Both sites were heavily looted, so if there were plans for a nuclear bomb or even some weapons-grade material, it would be long gone by now.<more>
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