Letters to the Editor for Wednesday, July 16, 2008
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Published: July 15, 2008
Yellowcake in Iraq? No big deal, writers say
In regard to the July 14 editorial, “Well, what do you know? Nukes in Iraq,” I have never read or heard such a misleading headline or piece! If I listened to the “Fair and Balanced Network News” on a regular basis, maybe your editorial would not stand out as the most misleading I have encountered. Perhaps a little research of facts should be in order before you write such an editorial in the future.
Click to sendThe only “news” in the AP story you referenced is the successful sale and shipment of this yellowcake to Canada, not the fact that it existed.
What “nukes” in Iraq? Yellowcake does not a “nuke” make. It is only the first step, after mining, in the uranium enrichment process. About 64,000 tons of it is produced worldwide every year. This 550 metric tons of yellowcake, shipped from Iraq was not newly discovered. It was known about and monitored by U.N. inspectors, dating back to the first Gulf War. None of the yellowcake shipped to Canada was newer than 1991.
And that, sir, is fact.
LINDA SULLIVAN
Lynchburg
No hysterics, please
I thank the writer of Monday’s histrionic editorial for reminding readers that truth is not proven by repeated assertion and passionate wishful thinking. Also, that argument should be accompanied by context and evidence. Some sustainable facts were edited out of the writer’s history of recent events.
Yellowcake is mined in numerous countries on several continents. The United States and its nuclear allies have tried to control the distribution, but people of different nations have safe possession of the stuff. It is essentially uranium in its ore form. It might only be called “high grade” by a handful of nations who possess the highly developed technology to turn it into weapons-grade material. Yellowcake is as far from a nuclear bomb as a grain of sand is from a silicone chip.
The world press knew of the uranium ore at the former nuclear complex, as did the U.N. weapons inspectors. The U.S. and British newspapers of record covered this during the infamous looting of Iraq after the invasion. The al-Tawaitha site was not so popular with looters, perhaps because a barrel of uranium ore wasn’t worth a barrel of cooking oil in post-liberation Iraq. Insurgents were looking for more valuable stuff like AK-47s or medicine or anything but low-level radioactive dirt.
Every member of the U.N. Security Council voted to extend the Weapons Inspections at the end of 2002. Hence they did not believe that Saddam had the WMDs. It was only Tony Blair who was later persuaded by Bush and who faithfully served up the “sexed up” intel which became known as the Downing Street Dossier. This is where the Niger yellowcake story came from, along with other fanciful weapons-grade false intelligence.
The Congressional Record and the trial of Scooter Libby, who perjured himself to protect his boss, show that CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame was indeed outed by someone at the White House. Former Ambassador Joe Wilson, on sensitive U.S. intelligence business, acquitted himself successfully on his mission to Niger. The intelligence was false.
Even with 3,500 barrels of low level radioactive dirt, Saddam Hussein would have had to kidnap some Israeli nuclear technicians and their precision centrifuges to come close to making a bomb. Remember that our Israeli friends have about 150 nuclear warheads with a delivery system courtesy of Uncle Sam, easily capable of reaching half the world’s cities.
I guess we liberals are about 60 percent of the country now that two to one of us believes that the war was a mistake. That’s about the same percentage who want us out in a scheduled withdrawal. There are some military families who feel the same way after five deployments. Ask them if they think that radioactive dirt amounts to a hill of beans.
JERRY TIDY
Lynchburg
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Reader Reactions
Posted by ( Fred ) on July 17, 2008 at 4:24 am
commonsenseplz,
Thanks for the compliment.
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Posted by ( JacksonPollock ) on July 16, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Truthseeker and Fred. You are both conceptually advanced in your suggestions for GWB and his criminal cronies. Mulkasey, et. al are burning the midnight oil to keep the elected idiots (of course, those who voted for GWB are among the idiots) out of jail once “dur Shrub-whacker” leaves office (only 188 days left).
The Democratic congress has let us down, somewhat, in that could be more aggressive in their relationship with GWB, but, eventually, it will all work out, and, we should all live long enough to see Bush and his co-conspirators in jail for war crimes for failing to heed the international law set forth in “that quaint document” known as the Geneva Convention. Peace.
luv2bstupid: <silence>
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Posted by ( Randolph Knipp ) on July 16, 2008 at 7:13 pm
It is incomprehensible that some men and women who post these wild psycho scenarios of lies, hate, and conspiracy actually believe their own postings. Just look at the rantings in today’s postings, and wonder if those people are actually working and living right here in River City! Absolutely astounding what they have swallowed, hook, line, and sinker. Today there is news of a suicide bombing in northern Iraq that killed 15 Iraqis and wounded some 60 others, and these nuts actually count these as acts of George Bush? More convoluted reasoning than I can stomach. Fails the Occam’s Razor test.
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Posted by ( commonsenseplz ) on July 16, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Fred, luv may sound like Rush, but you sound like Mike Malloy.
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Posted by ( Fred ) on July 16, 2008 at 10:50 am
In 2003, the US launched a war of aggression against Iraq.
After the US occupied Iraq, its troops protected only one place … the OIL MINISTRY, in blatant violation of the Geneva Convention (that “quaint” document according to Speedy Gonzales). Hospitals, schools, the National Museum, the National Library, power plants, waste treatment plants, military and research installations, ammunition dumps, etc. were all thoroughly looted while American soldiers looked passively on. Rumsfeld, when confronted with this shameful behavior, famously declared, “Shit happens”!
The al-Tawaitha site (where the 550 metric tons were suddenly “discovered” to the great delight of the editor!) was well documented by everybody, from UN inspectors to the US military, and yet was not protected for a long time. Iraqi peasants, not knowing any better, stole barrels full of yellowcake, emptied them and used them to store food and water. Greenpeace was the first one to go there and retrieve the barrels and other contaminated equipment. But, it was already too late. Iraqis are now dying horrible deaths from radiation poisoning (including women and children, always of such concern to luv!). I remember Randolph telling us how proud he is of being American and of our involvement in Iraq (he must also be a proponent of the “Shit happens” theory).
It was so outraged I wrote, at the time, a letter to the editor stating that Bush (and his gang) should be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
After al-Bashir, the President of Sudan, was charged recently with similar crimes by the International Criminal Court, I reiterated my call in this forum. However, I had the feeling of preaching alone in the vast American intellectual wasteland, when suddenly I ran across an article titled “First al-Bashir, next … Bush?” by Mark Levine, professor of Middle East history at the University of California, Irvine. Not surprisingly, it was not published by any of the “liberal” media but by Aljazeera.Net.
That article states, in part: “For Americans, however, the ICC indictment should offer a moment of somber reflection not merely for our relative inaction with regard to years of mass murder in Sudan. It is equally disturbing that much of the al-Bashir indictment could just as easily be applied to George Bush, the US president. It is clear to most Iraqis that the chaos being reaped by the US in their country was in fact deliberately sown by the US to create a situation that would make any US withdrawal almost impossible to pull off [after all, McCain wants to stay there one hundred years!]. While the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – for which BUSH, AND ALONG WITH HIM, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO TWICE ELECTED HIM, ARE RESPONSIBLE [emphasis mine] – is tragic, it should not be understated that the invasion itself was a crime against humanity”. That is precisely what I had said many times.
It feels so good to be finally vindicated. I now fervently hope that al-Bashir and Bush will have a chance to meet in La Hague one day!
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Posted by ( luv2bliberal ) on July 16, 2008 at 9:11 am
democRATS here we come!
Hitler was named “Man of the Year” in 1938 by Time Magazine. They noted Hitler’s anti-capitalistic economic policies:
“Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany’s bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism.“
(Source: Time Magazine; Jaunuary 2, 1939.)
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Posted by ( David McLoughlin ) on July 16, 2008 at 9:07 am
Good response Linda and Jerry. It always helps the dialogue when the facts are accurate.
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Posted by ( luv2bliberal ) on July 16, 2008 at 9:05 am
Fred,
I haven’t heard Rush in years. I wish he was back on in the ‘burg. It appears that his exercising his first amendment right offends you.
So we can now put you on record as being against the first and second amendment. Any more you don’t like?
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Posted by ( Fred ) on July 16, 2008 at 8:51 am
I have it, from a generally reliable source operating from an undisclosed location, that the asinine editorial about yellowcake was ghost written by ... Rush Limbaugh (while waiting for the delivery of his 54 million dollar Gulstream, present from all the morons who listen to him). This revives my trust in Logan.
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Posted by ( luv2bliberal ) on July 16, 2008 at 6:59 am
So yellowcake uranium scattered across the desert is ok, but plastic shopping bags at Kroger will kill the planet?
I really liked Jerrys revisionist wording “scheduled withdrawal”. Yes, he is an Obama supporter for sure. His wording changed as Obamas’ move to “Bush III” territory. Two years ago the democRATS wanted us out NOW! What happened?
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