500 tons of uranium shipped from Iraq, Pentagon says
 

Funny, I must have missed this on the news......

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/ira...ium/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States secretly shipped out of Iraq more than 500 tons of low-grade uranium dating back to the Saddam Hussein era, the Pentagon said Monday.

The U.S. military spent $70 million ensuring the safe transportation of 550 metric tons of the uranium from Iraq to Canada, said Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman.

The shipment, which until recently was kept secret, involved a U.S. truck convoy, 37 cargo flights out of Baghdad to a transitional location, and then a transoceanic voyage on board a U.S.-government-owned ship designed to carry troops to a war zone, he said.

The "yellowcake" uranium transfer was requested by the Iraqi government at the encouragement of the U.S. government, Whitman said.

The United States approached Canadian company Cameco to bid for the material, according Cameco spokesman Lyle Krahn. He would not disclose the winning bid amount.

Krahn admitted that this was not a "routine transaction," but he said the agreement was approved by the Canadian government and was carefully monitored.

The undertaking, named "Operation McCall" by Pentagon officials, was in the planning stages for months and was completed Saturday after the material had been in transit for weeks, according to Whitman.

He said yellowcake uranium is a commonly traded commodity used for nuclear power generation. It is not enriched and cannot be used without first going through a complicated enrichment process, he said, but because of the unstable nature of Iraq, the United States and the Iraqi government decided it should be moved out of that country. Iraq has no nuclear power generating plants.

The uranium was packed into 110 shipping containers moved by convoy from a facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. The containers were first moved to the secure International Zone in central Baghdad and then to Baghdad International Airport, where thery were loaded onto C-17 cargo planes.

It took 37 flights to move the shipping containers out of Iraq to a "third country," Whitman said.

A Pentagon official who asked not to be named said that third country was Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean where the United Kingdom and the United States operate a joint military base.

From that third country, Whitman said, the containers were loaded onto the SS Gopher State, a U.S.-owned crane ship normally used to haul equipment in and out of war zones. The ship carried the uranium to Canada, where it was bought by Cameco, a private firm.

The uranium will be sent by truck to two processing plants in Ontario, Krahn said. Once it has been enriched for energy use it will be sold to power plant operators, he said.

The United States is Cameco's largest customer, Krahn said, but he did not specify if the Iraq yellowcake would ultimately end up in the United States.

Whitman said the Department of Defense's cost of securing and transporting the uranium from Tuwaitha to Canada was $70 million, and the government of Iraq had agreed in principal to reimburse the United States for part of that cost.

Was that some of the yellow cake that "was not" bought from Africa according to that guy that got Scooter Libby in trouble... that whole deal? :winkwink::1orglaugh

I remember seeing this on the news a few days ago. What struck me as odd was the transport ship was designed to transport troops. I wonder when the next time that ship is used for troops how sick they get.
WG

if anyone is interested, achmed has a few hundred pounds of that for sale...

I doubt that.

Ok so how did it get INTO Iraq in the first place again? Remember they didnt have any, and didn't buy any from Africa. :1orglaugh

Oops sorry I beat your edit. :1orglaugh

No wonder my tomatoes were glowing pink lately
:Oh crap

doesn't it seem too convenient they found it now and the press found out about this "secret" mission? I figure fox is going to run with it.

That is very odd. I have heard countless times in the media that there was no WMD program in Iraq. :disgust

Fox? That looks like a cnn article to me.

uranium != WMD :)

oh the running with it hasnt started yet my friend. This will be the beat that will start the war drum for Iran.Watch and see.

pre-1991, dummy ... listen or read ... was all over the news... that the USA stole it, shipped it to a Montreal company .. in my backyard ...

Why do you think they kept it secret ... bunch of war mongers fool ... :1orglaugh

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world..._Cana da.html

You guys probably sold him in the first place to use against Iran ... :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

So wait.. 500 tons wasn't enough to enrich to make a bomb or 3? Saddam didn't have wmd, and wasn't trying to make any remember? Interesting fo sure.. :1orglaugh

Read the article, dummy.

canada for the win bitches:

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Cana...78996-sun.html

Funny the cnn one did not mention that did it? You posted one that more suited you I guess. Any collaborating articles that match yours?

I sale cheap yellowcake

This article doesn't mention that it was U.N. Secured back in 91 lol.

come on sticky if that would of showed W was telling the truth dont you think this would of came out in 2004?

? 2008 Associated Press

With such a bunch of idiots, no wonder you guys elect a dummy as president and wage war over the world :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

if the yellowcake that iraq couldn't process anyway was such a threat why would the US gov want to keep it secret?:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories

just another stupid right wing echo chamber propaganda point.

To be able to leak it afterwards, for the brain dead ..... Spin, like the buildup to the war: the drones, the yellow cake, the aluminium tubes, etc ....

another article pre-1991 confirm:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ional/Ontario/

Actually, the article proves that the whole Niger story was complete and total bullshit. They had tons of yellowcake to begin with, there was no reason for them to purchase it from anyone. That was what the whole scandal was about. Anyone who had any knowledge of Iraq's nuclear program knew that Saddam didn't need to buy yellowcake from anyone. It was just a made up story to feed the sheep (and worked!).

Iraq had a huge amount of yellowcake that we knew about due to all their phosphate mining back in the 80's. This was all documented by UN inspectors before the war.

And yellowcake is not a WMD. It's actually not even considered a health hazard. To convert yellowcake into weapons grade material takes incredible engineering that Saddam was nowhere close to being capable of doing. Yellowcake has a pretty name that sounds scary, but it's really not. If our policy is to invade every country with a crazy leader who has yellowcake available, we'd have to blow up most of the world.

Hmmmm. I don't care when they found it. The fact that it was in Iraq scares the crap out of me....

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Cana...78996-sun.html

The 550 tonnes of "yellowcake," the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment, was sold to Canadian uranium producer Cameco Corp. in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars."

From the IAEA:

In the period 1979 through 1982, Iraq procured yellowcake from both Portugal and Niger and uranium dioxide from Brazil.

...

The yellowcake procured from Portugal was supplied in two batches. Batch 1, received on 20 June 1980, consisted of 429 drums containing 138,098 kg of yellowcake and batch two, received as three consignments over the period from 17 May 1982 through 20 June 1982, consisted of 487 drums containing 148,348 kg yellow cake. By letters dated 6 August 1981, 1 June 1982 and 21 July 1982, Iraq notified the IAEA of the receipt of this material, which confirmed the complementary notifications received from Portugal at the time of shipment.

There was no WMDS in Iraq. Fact.

While I'm certainly on the side of the sane and *assume* there was no WMDs in Iraq, no one can absolutely say for certain there weren't any.

I can say I don't believe there are any AAA batteries in my condo right now because I just walked through it looking for one and didn't see any. But it's not impossible that there is one that I missed ... Same goes for WMD in Iraq. So no, it's not fact there aren't any, but yes a betting man would surely wager there isn't.

Just thought I'd attack your false statement by attacking the semantics with an irrelevant analogy. K?