Lies and Disinformation: The Niger Red Herring

[TahitiNut]

On September 24, 2002, the British Government "assessment" noted:

"There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of <yellow cake> uranium from Africa. Iraq has no active civilian nuclear power programme or nuclear power plants and therefore has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium."

Let's do the simplest of deconstructions. They said "Iraq has no active civilian nuclear power programme or nuclear power plants."

Excuse me? Well, what then are we to make of the widely-reported story about "Iraq looters exposed to radioactive yellow cake"? In this story, we're informed that "By April 8, when Iraq nuclear energy commission officials got a handle on the situation, they discovered about 100 drums containing yellow cake were missing."

But we're also "informed" in the 'coalition assessment' that Iraq has no nuclear power program<me> or nuclear power plants. (Then what is the "Iraq nuclear energy commission"???)
Huh? :wtf:

Then we must wonder why anyone would think it noteworthy or even rational that Iraq would purportedly attempt to obtain something from Niger that Iraq's own illiterate villagers could loot from a faciltiy that we're assured Iraq doesn't have but which was visited several times by the Weapons Inspection Teams.
Huh? :wtf:

Then perhaps we should wonder wtf would Iraq do with more "yellow cake" ... uranium oxide ... which would require extensive (many square miles!) industrial processes about a year to convert to a quantity of weapons-grade U325 sufficient to make merely one nuclear weapon! Just one.

Even the lies are garbage. Even if we had reason to believe there was some small grain of truth in the "Niger report," we're left with even more lies and deceit. How can anyone not be appalled at this megalomaniacal insanity?

[G_j]

1. wow

WTF is right. I didn't realise that the looted material was "yellow cake". Are there different grades?

I'm having a hard time getting my head around the motivation for all this, but I'm sure there was/is one.

[sandnsea]

2. It was under IAEA seal

If you're trying to make nuclear weapons without the international community noticing, you don't use uranium the international community already knows you have.

[TahitiNut]

3. So, the IAEA was active

in a country with no active nuclear energy program and no nuclear reactors? :eyes: