500 tons of uranium shipped from Iraq, Pentagon says

[mastermg]

I am definately suspecting something coming up. This is a CNN article so it might not be truthful... nonetheless try to extract something from it.



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.

He said he could not say how much Iraq intends to repay the United States.


http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium/

[rsol]

AHHH. so they DID have yellowcake:) so surely this belongs to iraq? so why the hell is iraq having to pay the usa to ship this out and make a fortune? What do i think? its all made up.

An unnamed official is happy to give up "government secrets"...bullshit. its just to shore up the idea Saddam had nukes.

[SiLVa]

Quote:AHHH. so they DID have yellowcake:) so surely this belongs to iraq? so why the hell is iraq having to pay the usa to ship this out and make a fortune? What do i think? its all made up.

An unnamed official is happy to give up "government secrets"...bullshit. its just to shore up the idea Saddam had nukes.

But...um...not trying to have ago or anything, but he was named...a couple times actually

Quote:...Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman

Yellow cake doesnt equal nukes either...although some may think so.
But as was said in the article, Iraq didnt even have a nuclear power generating plant needed to enrich the stuff.

Do you think everything about the story is "made-up"?

[---]

I was wondering why Iraq has to fully foot the bill for this as well - surely, no matter what the truth of the story is, the yellowcake is a commodity which will be utilised in the US nuclear power industry? - not the Iranian!:rolleyes: What is the going market price of yellow cake anyhow? I think Bechtel should have to pay for the transport.

At $700 million they might have been better off letting the Russians deal with it - ah, but then they might as well of just gifted it to Iran - okayy, I get it:)

[rsol]

i believe there was a statement made by the bush administration about Iraq importing yellowcake from Africa or something like that. a certain Joe Wilson had his wife outed for saying that this wasn't so.

omg theres actually a wiki on it:)

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

named informant or not. its not a "leak"

noone can say for sure if this information is true or not. we just have to go on the reports. but this is not bad news for TPTB. Either they have intercepted/bought on the black market/are there reserves of uranium in Afghanistan?

[Hans Olo]

It doesn't matter if it's CNN or whoever, because it starts with "the Pentagon said" in the first sentence. So this is not news of the kind where journalism is involved. It's a Pentagon press release. So the question is not do you trust CNN, it's "do you trust the Pentagon".

Jeez;)

[Guest]

Quote:It doesn't matter if it's CNN or whoever, because it starts with "the Pentagon said" in the first sentence. So this is not news of the kind where journalism is involved. It's a Pentagon press release. So the question is not do you trust CNN, it's "do you trust the Pentagon".

Jeez;)

A wise perspective.

[JazzRoc]

Iraq DID have a nuclear reactor.

The Israelis bombed it while you were in nappies. Saddam would have been able to take that yellowcake and turn it into nukes within a decade from initiating operations. The nuclear plant had all the appropriate bells and whistles.

Assuming 15% overall process efficiency (gotta generate power as well!), that 500 TONS would get you 12,500 nasty little nukes...

Remember that VERY BIG GUN?:fight9:It wasn't intended to fire greetings cards....

[---]

Quote:Iraq DID have a nuclear reactor.

The Israelis bombed it while you were in nappies. Saddam would have been able to take that yellowcake and turn it into nukes within a decade from initiating operations. The nuclear plant had all the appropriate bells and whistles.

Assuming 15% overall process efficiency (gotta generate power as well!), that 500 TONS would get you 12,500 nasty little nukes...

Remember that VERY BIG GUN?:fight9:It wasn\'t intended to fire greetings cards....

Clearly he was a threat to freedom

[mastermg]

Quote:It doesn't matter if it's CNN or whoever, because it starts with "the Pentagon said" in the first sentence. So this is not news of the kind where journalism is involved. It's a Pentagon press release. So the question is not do you trust CNN, it's "do you trust the Pentagon".

Jeez;)

ok:)

[rsol]

Quote:

Quote:Iraq DID have a nuclear reactor.

The Israelis bombed it while you were in nappies. Saddam would have been able to take that yellowcake and turn it into nukes within a decade from initiating operations. The nuclear plant had all the appropriate bells and whistles.

Assuming 15% overall process efficiency (gotta generate power as well!), that 500 TONS would get you 12,500 nasty little nukes...

Remember that VERY BIG GUN?:fight9:It wasn\'t intended to fire greetings cards....

Clearly he was a threat to freedom

So was any of this military grade? he had 30 years to produce it. that would of been enough time to have refined some of it. If that's what he bought and that's what hes got left, then it's basically sat there since the bombing.

[JazzRoc]

Quote:

Quote:Iraq DID have a nuclear reactor.

The Israelis bombed it while you were in nappies. Saddam would have been able to take that yellowcake and turn it into nukes within a decade from initiating operations. The nuclear plant had all the appropriate bells and whistles.

Assuming 15% overall process efficiency (gotta generate power as well!), that 500 TONS would get you 12,500 nasty little nukes...

Remember that VERY BIG GUN?:fight9:It wasn\'t intended to fire greetings cards....

Clearly he was a threat to freedom

Both the bugger on the left and the bastard on the right were threats...

Nice groove, but badly recorded....

[mexika]

The regular swastika media at play. Let the Brainwash begin!!! These suckers are seeking justifications of why they killed over a million Iraqis........

[mexika]

this is more like 500 tons of Lies shipped from Iraq by the Pentagon...