The War In Iraq And The Traitors In Our Midst :: Political News and commentaries

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January 14, 2007

The War In Iraq And The Traitors In Our Midst

To paraphrase William Shakespeare's famous observation in his Romeo and Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" likewise those who would have us lose in Iraq and be defeated at any cost, though they may claim themselves "patriots" and call themselves euphemistically "patriotic dissenters," "conscientious objectors," et al, by any other name would be as seditious and treasonous; and God only knows the Democratic aisle of Congress abounds with "Roses" - though their treachery smells as foul as that of any other traitor!

This, pathetically, mostly for petty, partisan, political reasons, in this time of war, and at a time when we face as a nation one of the greatest threats to our very existence ever!

In their sick, rabid, obsession to get back at their nemeses, President Bush and the Republicans, out of embitterment, resentment, and vengeance for their political defeats in 2000 and 2004, in order to defeat and humiliate them, who for so long wrested political power from their godless, liberal, secularist hands, and turned the country away for 12 years from the 'Juggernaut' of the leftist, socialist, godless secularist agenda they wish to continue shoving down the throat of the American people, these leftist Democratic so called "dissenting patriots" have embarked, since the beginning of the war in Iraq, in an unrelenting campaign of naysaying and obstructionism unprecedented in our nation's history!

We may keep calling the anti-war Democrats and the left in America "patriots" all day long in our present society's asinine acquiescence to our politically correct equivalent of the mass delusion of calling the wondrous cloth of the Emperor's new clothes "the most luxurious, exquisite, and resplendent, with a chromatic rainbow of myriad hues and a thousand colors that ever was"... though there is really nothing there. But, whether out of respect for the established secularist, morally relativistic, social norm; or just out of fear of becoming reviled and ostracized for standing out in the crowd as a politically incorrect bigot who dares to defy the established consensus and speak the truth, much as happened with the child in the fairy tale, in fact the 'Emperor' is naked, just as much as in the same manner the hate America, anti-war, anti-military actions of all these Democrats and leftists are nothing but outright sedition and treason!

No matter which way you want to slice it, or what nomenclature you may use to describe their position: "immediate withdrawal," "re-deployment of our troops," "gradual scaling down of troop levels," "bringing home our troops (in humiliation and defeat, with their tails between their legs)," or plain "cut-and-running," it should be blatantly obvious by now, that the Democrats and the anti-war left here in America, as with the rest of their socialist 'comrades' around the world, wants us to lose the war in Iraq regardless of the ensuing consequences to our nation and the world. Period!

It should be telling, how when such conservative pundits as Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and others, have confronted these people, as Bill did David Letterman (or should that be David 'Weatherman,' as in the radical underground group that was the vanguard of the 60s peace movement and placed bombs in public buildings much as Islamist terrorists do today?) on Letterman's show, or Sean did Democratic strategist Laura Schwartz on Hannity & Colmes, and asked them outright if they want America to win in Iraq, they seem unable to put forth a straightforward honest answer, but have rather spin, danced around the question, and tried to avoid a straight answer with all sorts of aloof and abstruse rhetorical remarks, such as that given by David Letterman to O'Reilly, that "he did not have an answer to that because he was a thinking man."

Of course, to these Democratic, leftist, elitists, you must be an uneducated oaf and or a clodhopper, from that big empty expanse of nothing (in their view) between the two thin 'enlightened' fringes of elitist secularist 'Blue' on either coasts, if you believe in something so quaint as "God" or "patriotism," want unequivocally for America to win this war in Iraq against the Islamofacists, support our President in these difficult times, and or support our military or enlist to serve!

John Kerry made this 'elitist' world-view of the left and the Democrats very clear in his recent salacious remarks when he stated that: "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't you get stuck in Iraq." which he did not misspeak, nor was it a "botched joke," as the Democratic damage control machine was quick to put out there, but that it simply slipped out, and shows the patronizing, elitist, bias, of all these leftists, Democrat demagogues!

The anti-war crowd, the left, and the Democrats may protest (and they always seem to have something to protest about, condemn, and hate about America no matter what!) the denouncement by conservatives of their treason, and claim that they are as 'patriotic' as George Washington and Betsy Ross, or as 'American' as the Mississippi and apple pie, or wrap themselves in 'Old Glory' for justification, but their deeds precede them. In fact, many still cherish, stashed away in their closets, the Viet Cong flags they unfurled and waved in front of our nation's Capitol and in our campuses back in the ignominious days of the Vietnam war, in the 'Free Love', drug induced 'Alternate Reality', anti-establishment 'Rebels Without a Cause', psychodelic 'Hippie', days of their youth - though now they wear $2000.00 Armani suits and neckties, and run the liberal secularist political apparatus in Washington, with their whitening hairs, and receding hairlines.

They may claim that their blatant treason is but "patriotic dissent," but, shouldn't we in that case then, re-instate Benedict Arnold to the Pantheon of our Founding Fathers and of our Revolutionary Heroes, since his personal conviction that the Colonies were better off under British rule, and his consequent actions to achieve that goal, could be said to parallel the "patriotic dissent," and to have been induced by similar motives, and accentuated by similar actions, as that of our present batch of Democratic 'Benedict Arnolds'?

You can truly say that if the Iraq war was a football game, from the very beginning of the conflict, the anti-war movement, the radical left, the traitorous Democrats in Congress, and their mouthpiece and propaganda machine, the liberal media, have been openly rooting and cheering in the bleachers for our defeat. They have engaged in assiduously undermining the confidence of the American people in the war effort with unprecedented tenacity, advocated for the rights of the terrorists and insurgents to the point of absurdity in the face of the threat they pose, and have aided and abetted at every turn those trying to defeat our 'home team'... those killing our young men and women on the battlefield in Iraq... those who day to day chant "Death to America" and have sworn to obliterate us!

It is obvious that these turncoats want America to quit the field and be defeated, thereby granting our enemies victory, and to this end they have done all in their power to achieve their goal: from carrying an intense, unrelenting, propaganda campaign in the media of naysaying, defamation, misinformation, and discouragement of the American people that would have made 'Tokyo Rose' look like a USO entertainer in her time, to aiding the enemy by regularly disclosing classified information as The New York Times has assiduously done!

Now, why would any Islamofacist terrorist need to spy on us, or plant a 'mole' within any of our government agencies, when all he has to do is to subscribe to The New York Times to find out about all the classified information he seeks, on regularly basis, and read about how-to suggestions on new creative ways to attack us, and to boot he gets daily 'free delivery' right to the front door of his cave or hideout? The New York times has certainly given a new twist to printing the "classifieds"!

Just turn to CNN, MSNBC, and the 'Pink Alphabet Networks' ABC, CBS, and NBC, or read The New York Times, the L.A. Times, the St. Petersburg Times and other left leaning rags of their ilk, and you can almost hear them all cheering: "Down with Bush! Down with the war! Give me an O, give me an S, give me an A, give me an M, give me an A: Osama, the insurgents, rah, rah, rah!" Hell! Haven't some of them even called these murderous, barbaric, terrorists "Freedom Fighters"?

At the expense of our own national security and the future of our country, indeed that of Western Civilization and the world as we know it, these Democrats, their radical, socialist, leftists allies, and the liberal media that serves them, have been continuously engaged in viciously opposing each and every terrorist counter-measure by the administration that would impede the enemy's plans and designs to carry more horrific 9/11 attacks against Americans on our own soil.

They have constantly endeavored since the beginning of the Iraq war to drag America through the mud before the eyes of world opinion at every opportunity, as a way in which to erode international support for the war effort and discredit the President and the administration in the eyes of our allies and the world.

They apparently wish for our allies, in the face of our internal divisiveness, the fickleness and inconstancy of our electorate, and America's apparent inability to stomach much of the violence of war and or a protracted struggle, to simply shrug and come to the sad conclusion that our enemies are right, and that as Ahmadinejad and Osama proclaim defiantly with contempt and revulsion at our lack of backbone to the world, we have become indeed but a " Sunset Power in decline" and a " Paper Tiger" in spite of all our military and economic might! And that though supposedly we are the only 'Super Power' left on the planet, and in spite of having the best trained Armed Forces, and the most sophisticated and technologically advanced equipment in the world, all our enemies have to do is to step on our toes, and or show us a bit of blood and gore, for us to run away from the conflict heaving with nausea, yelping like a beaten dog, with our tails between our legs, hurrying home to stick our heads in the sand and pretend we are safe!

Sadly, the cowardice and mendacity of our politicians must be incontrovertible proof to our allies around the world, that America is unreliable, not to be trusted in her international commitments, and that they better think twice before committing themselves to any military endeavors in which we get embroiled; lest we pullout when the going gets tough, as Congress is wont to do, and leave them stranded all by themselves in the quagmire and the slaughter! They must perforce come to the inescapable realization that America always loses its nerve and cuts-and-runs on its allies; as we did in the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, in Saigon in Vietnam in May 1975, and in Mogadishu in 1993!

(The 'American Thinker' has an excellent article on Mogadishu and the present repercussions of its echoes in the Iraq war: http://www.americanthinker.com/2005/11/reconstructing_murtha_iii_its.html)

These defeatist, anti-war, leftists, Democratic naysayers, no sooner had our troops marched into Baghdad and toppled the brutal Saddam regime, to the cheer and dancing in the streets of joyous Iraqis, cheering our troops and carrying signs thanking President Bush and America for their liberation, than they were already insidiously working to turn our victory in Iraq into defeat!

They, and the propagandistic, leftist, liberal, media apparatus that serves their cause, began raising questions about the WMDs even before all our troops had landed, or had a chance of combing the countryside in order to find them.

From the very beginning they nit-picked every on-going development in the war, trying to find some fault or shortcoming that they could latch unto to virulently criticize and condemn, and turn into a scandal, with which to undermine the war effort: from their moping about the lack of proper protection of Iraqi Antiquities at the Baghdad Museum; to the supposed caches of arms gone missing - which had supposedly been inspected and sealed by U.N. inspectors while Saddam was still in power (as if that is not an oxymoron in itself), to the lawlessness in the streets of Baghdad, to alleged abuses of Iraqis or Iraqi prisoners if we tried to curb that lawlessness!

This they culminated with their 'Coup de Grace' - all the scandalmongering they did about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal (which had already been addressed and was under investigation by our military for some time when it was disclosed on the press), heedless of the volatile consequences that such disclosure would have, which would only serve, as it did, to inflame anti-American Islamist sentiments, and escalate the retaliatory violence of the Jihadists, further endangering our troops on the battlefield, accentuating all the on-going bloodshed and the carnage, and further endangering the lives and safety of innocent civilians in Iraq; as was the case with the subsequent kidnaping and beheading of Nicholas Berg and other foreign nationals as a result!

Even as far back as 2003, barely weeks after the invasion, these traitors amongst us, who want us to lose in Iraq, and their elite liberal media mouthpieces, were already advancing their not so hidden agenda of defeatism for political gains, and raising ominous prophecies of doom and defeat, prophesying our imminent failure in Iraq, and foretelling their self-fulfilling 'sectarian violence' scenarios; which they have so helped to fulfill with all their negative, pessimistic, highly suggestive, and inflammatory coverage. In fact, said coverage by the media has given the terrorists and the insurgents so many "inspiring" ideas on what course of action to take, and so much encouragement, that is simply appalling!

An article by Robert Parry entitled " Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down" dated March 30, 2003, published on Consortiumnews.com, amply proves the point. In it Parry gloatingly predicts our inevitable failure in Iraq, and compares it to similar instances in the past when Democratic meddling, defeatism, and lack of backbone has resulted in similar debacles as that they wish to make out of both, the war in Iraq, and the war on terror. He began his patronizing, leftist, defeatist, dribble thus:

"Whatever happens in the weeks ahead, George W. Bush has 'lost' the war in Iraq. The only question now is how big a price America will pay, both in terms of battlefield casualties and political political hatred swelling around the world."

(http://www.consortiumnews.com/2003/033003a.html)

Now, you must remember that Mr. Parry wrote this back in March of 2003! My God! Is this man prophetic, or was this simply part of the same 'script,' the same 'agenda' that the left, the Democrats, and their allies at the secularist media have been using and advancing day in and day out, since day one, in their anti-Bush, anti-war 'soap opera' being mass fed to the American populace unrelentingly in the press, on TV, in the movies, in print, and everywhere they turn to, in the pervasive campaign of "liberal," "leftist," "hate America," "anti-Bush," "anti-war" psychological warfare, which they have employed since we first went in into Iraq, in order to turn American public opinion around against Bush, the Administration, and the war, as they have?

True to their leftist agenda, the left-leaning elite media has consistently played this 'script,' and supported it with an insidious daily diet of negativity, pessimism, and naysaying; and their daily gloating - like the journalistic vultures and prophets of woe they are - over the unceasing stream of sensationalistic images of carnage, violence, and bloodshed from Iraq, with which they incessantly flood our television screens; some of them, as in the case of some false AP reportages from Iraq, and the famous Reuters 'doctored' pictures from Lebanon, even outright fabricated! Outrageous!

If anything, it is these traitors in our midst, who have morphed the conflict in Iraq into the present chaos we face, with their self-fulfilling prophecies of doom, sectarian violence, and defeat, which they so assiduously have worked to make into reality.

In this day and age of global communications, satellite links, the internet, 'Ipod,' 'Blueberry,' instant messaging, and cell phones, this insidious subliminal message of defeatism on the war in Iraq, and of the so called "Bush failed policies" (such as CNNs blatantly partisan, pro-Democratic, banner: "Broken Government" on its reportages just days prior to the November elections), has been corrosive and pervasive, propagated and dished out in one form or another by the liberal media and its allies in the print, communications, and entertainment industries, and by Hollywood, and it has inevitably seeped into, and permeated, every corner of our culture in America!

For the last four years we have been subjected to an unrelenting daily barrage of negative newscasts on Iraq, focusing almost exclusively on the violence, the carnage, and the bloodshed, and on the shortcomings and reverses, while ignoring or dismissing any gains made.

Bush and Iraq have been berated daily at every level on our television screens, in sit-coms , in variety shows as 'The View' and the 'Today Show', on late night venues such as David letterman's and Jay Leno's, and on other programming, such as the patently negatively biased documentaries on the war shown on HBO and CNN.

Comedians such as Jon Stewart and Bill Maher have unswervingly used each and every one of their shows as platforms from which to advance said 'script' and their leftist secularist agenda, and launch every day their daily diet of raunchy, often vicious, political attacks on President Bush and his administration; ridiculing and belittling the President at every turn, savaging the administration and its policies, mocking the views and politics of conservative Americans as that of uncouth and unlearned inbred 'clodhoppers,' and criticizing and condemning the war in Iraq at every turn!

What's more, these comedians, as well as many in the media in general (as with Time magazine), purposely always choose to show President Bush in the worst light, in unflattering pictures taken with multi-frame-per-second cameras that captured him in the act of speaking, with his mouth open or in some awkward position, in order to offensively portray him as a fumbling, open-mouthed, drooling fool. Not content to savagely smear and malign the President on policy, and on his values and convictions, they have stooped so low as to also recur to manipulating and fabricating pictorial mockeries of him, belittling his down home folksy ways and demeanor!

On Hollywood and the Big Screen this 'script' has dutifully been propagated with such movies as George Clooney's 'Syriana' and Steven Spielberg's 'Munich,' where America and Israel are always the aggressors and the suicide bombing Islamist radicals and terrorists are always disingenuously portrayed as the 'victims;' such garbage as Michael Moore's leftist political hack documentary 'Fahrenheit 9/11' gets critically acclaimed, and, unbelievably, nominated for an Oscar; and the Academy Awards looked more like some punk leftist political rally than a Red Carpet Gala event, with all the raging anti-Bush/anti-war, leftist, political rants of the participants, which were duly enthusiastically applauded by the attending Hollywood crowd. And, obligingly, with all the asinine off-the-wall remarks against America, President Bush, and the Iraq war made by many Hollywood actors and celebrities (surprise?) like Sean Penn, Barbara Streisand, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin et al!

Even in the face of personal disaster the Hollywood crowd can't seem to let go of their Bush hatred, their warped leftist ideology, and their obsession with opposing the Iraq war; such as happened the other day to Hollywood startlet Suzanne Somers, of "Three is Company" fame, who, after having lost her home and all her possessions in the recent Malibu wildfires, when interviewed about her terrible loss, amazingly, could not refrain from interjecting into her comments a poke at the war in Iraq, saying "at least I don't have a son in Iraq"! Can you believe that? It is regrettable that Ms. Somers has lost her worldly possesions in the fire, but what is even more regrettable is that she seems to have lost all sense of proportionality and objectivity, even as relates to her own tragedy, after having drank for so long the Hollywood "Kool-Aid"! Or Jay Leno, in his comedy routine on the 'Late Night Show,' referring to the same Malibu wildfires as "the worst catastrophe to hit Malibu since Bush's re-election"! Then, even in our music we have the likes of the Dixie Chicks and the controversy surrounding their uncalled-for shameful comments! Of course, all this anti-American sedition is conveniently guaranteed by the First Amendment.

It is said that if you repeat or chant something hard and long enough, it eventually comes to happen; whether it by some kind of magic, mind over matter, or it only happens in the perception of those influenced by all the participatory chanting and the suggestion! The hate America crowd, the malcontents, the leftists, the anti-Bush/anti- war crowd, the Democrats, all the traitors in our midst, have incessantly chanted their "mantras" of failure in Iraq in our ears relentlessly, and have striven to undermine the war efforts in every possible way, until they have influenced the animus of the American people, and in some tenuous way have morphed the war in Iraq into a semblance of all the doom and the sectarian violence they so long have vaticinated in their hateful, ill-prophesied, self-fulfilling, auguries of doom and defeat!

As in the famous Jimmy Stewart classic, 'The Man who shot Liberty Valance': "When the truth contradicts the legend, print the legend." Those who wish us to lose in Iraq, have done all in their sick, partisan, traitorous, power to make their ill starred predictions come true.The media has obliged them by printing "the legend"!

Simply put, the hate America crowd, the left, and the Democrats just want us to lose in Iraq! Their "new direction" is simply that of defeat and surrender; they will have no other! One has to wonder what kind of sick, perverted, and twisted rationale, can call a retreat "victory," defeat a "success," and humiliation an "honor"! Only the Democrats!

With the present plan by the President, fresh new leadership at the helm of the military in Iraq, the deployment of 20, 000 more troops, and the implementation of new strategies on the ground, we may yet win the war in Iraq, but the more ominous lesson to be learned from this tragedy is that our greatest enemy are not the foes from without, not even the Islamist radicals that so fanatically wish to kill us, but that the greatest of all our enemies lies within, amongst us, like a cancer eating away at our entrails, our backbone, and our resolve! Ultimately, our greatest enemy are the traitors in our midst, that would surrender us to them!

Posted by Althor at January 14, 2007 09:00 PM

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Comments

Subject: Blood on Hands
To All:

http://starbulletin.com/2007/01/16/editorial/letters.html

U.S. troops' blood is on activists' hands

The increase in deaths of Hawaii soldiers from IEDs (Star-Bulletin, Jan. 15) can certainly be attributed to Earthjustice and Hawaiian sovereignty groups.

They spend their time blocking our military from training for war. Lack of training causes unnecessary deaths, and I blame Hawaii and its left-wing socialist residents.

I pray that our military commanders have the guts to move our military back to America where it belongs.

Ronald Edmiston
Honolulu

Comment: Special mention here belongs to US Congressman Neil "Pro-Hezbullah" Abercrombie (D-HI). Despite his professed loudmouth heroics as a street Vietnam-era protester, he neglects to mention his complicity in the Cambodian genocide of millions. Apparently, Abercrombie enjoys blood on his little hands.

With Aloha,

# Posted by harry at 01/16/2007 08:30 am - reply- forum

Subject: Do-Nothing Democrats
To all:

http://starbulletin.com/2007/01/16/editorial/letters.html

'Do-nothings' don't have a plan for Iraq

Alan Murakami ("Letters," Jan. 15) must know something the rest of the country does not.

The Democrats must stop the president's war plan. OK, then, where is the Democrats' plan? To keep criticizing everything that is laid on the table without a proposed alternative is irresponsible. That is why the Democrats can be called the "do-nothings" at this point.

Our own Hawaii congressional delegation is a group of partisan, biased, lifelong politicians who are badly out of touch with their constituents.

At least with Ed Case, there was some hope of getting something done. Now they have Mazie Hirono, a product of the Hawaii Democratic machine who will toe the party line and bow to the senior "do-nothing" statesmen. If I have ever seen a case for term limits, it is from this delegation.

James Roller
Mililani

Comment: Hirono's plan is to create a Department of Peace. Clearly, she is just another lap-puppet of Backddor Dan Inouye (In-No-WAY).

With aloha,

# Posted by harry at 01/16/2007 08:34 am - reply- forum

To all:

No Weapons of Mass Destrcution?

http://www.military.com/news/article/us-removes-uranium-from-iraq.html

US Removes Uranium From Iraq

July 06, 2008
Associated Press

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad - using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" - a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material - it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.

The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.

"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.

The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives - kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.

And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger - and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims - led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.

Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.

Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.

"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.

Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.

Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.

An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.

But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.

At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers - some leaking or weakened by corrosion - and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.

In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.

On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.

The yellowcake wasn't the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.

Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.

The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.

The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.

Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.

But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive "hot zones" entombed in concrete during Saddam's rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take "many years."

The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.

A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.

A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Comment: Uranium inhaled will eventually end up in the bones where its emitted alpha-particles will play havoc with our blood cell reproduction ... like tossing grenades in classrooms will filled with children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium

As for the potential dirty bomb comment:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Candi/Justice-Hawk/e/9780595267828/?itm=1

The figure 550 metric tons of yellowcake, in the right hands, could produce weapons-grade nuclear material ... dirty bombs or much worse!

With Aloha,

# Posted by harry at 07/06/2008 12:50 pm - reply- forum

January 14, 2007