''The demise of the nuclear bomb hoax''
Sunday, February
16, 2003
By Imad Khadduri
Former Iraqi nuclear scientist
YellowTimes.org Guest Columnist (
(YellowTimes.org) – On February 14, 2003,
Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), submitted, in accordance with U.N.
Resolution 1441, his second report to the Security Council on Iraq's nuclear
non-capability.
Much to the chagrin of President Bush and Colin
Powell, the nuclear inspection chief's findings not only cleared the smoke from
the imagined "smoking gun," but also dissipated the smog of
misinformation with which the American government, hungry for war, has
surrounded this issue.
The matters raised by ElBaradei
merit further comment.
The inspectors, the IAEA head reported, collected
hundreds of soil, air and water samples, and installed and reinstalled dozens
of radioactivity detectors -- including gamma-ray surveillance instruments both
airborne and ground based -- during 177 inspections and visits to 120 nuclear
related locations in the past nine weeks.
What is not generally known is that when Hans Blix, a month ago, challenged Bush and Blair to put up or
shut up, in effect challenging them to produce their "sensitive"
intelligence on suspected sites in order to allow the inspectors to verify the
vociferous claims of the likes of White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer's "we know they have it," a list of 25 sites was quietly
provided.
The inspectors visited each one of these sites and
found nothing. The total sum of all these samples, detectors and visits, as far
as the nuclear weapon program is concerned, was nil.
Powell's insinuations about
One might humbly ask what is stopping his
"scientists" and consultants now from "advising" their
government regarding the extreme unlikelihood that ongoing work related to
research and development of a nuclear weapon program would not leave a trace,
even in minute amounts, of certain half-life isotopes that would surely be
susceptible to detection by the latest highly-touted, ultra sensitive
instruments employed by the IAEA inspectors?
In succinct terms, should not the "no
finding" be a finding in itself, especially in a place where something was
specifically alleged to be a major finding?
Having raised the false specter of an Iraqi mushroom
cloud for a decade, Powell's scientists should consider it a matter of
conscience to enlighten their government with their expertise in these matters.
The aluminum tubes fanfare
so brazenly trumpeted by Powell is reduced to whether the reverse-engineering
attempt by Iraqi military engineers amounted to anything more than extra
precaution on the part of the engineers. They were most probably demanding
definite tolerances in order to ensure the success of their attempt to
manufacture locally the combustion chamber for a solid propellant rocket.
Powell's only claim to annoyance is that they were more expensive than American
aluminum tubes used for this purpose.
The fact is that aluminum tubes have been used to
build tens of thousands of rockets. The hypothesis is that the tubes might be
diverted for centrifuges. The "coating" applied to the tubes found in
It was also amusing to realize, while I watched the
generous outpouring by American "scientists" of detailed technical
information in support of Powell's fallacious claim, that they were, in fact,
explaining to Iraqi ears actually how to convert these aluminum tubes to
centrifugal isotope enrichment cylinders! I can only hope that the
"scientists" will not want to be paid for their generous technical
advice from the Oil for Food program revenue.
ElBaradei confirmed in
his report that it was "intelligence" information that led UNMOVIC to
the invasion of the private home of Faleh Hamza -- the supposedly "secret" keeper of the
laser enrichment technique -- and the consequent confiscation of 2000 pages of
personal documents. Powell had pursued this case in a pathetic attempt to
provide "evidence" for the third enrichment process. One wonders what
kind of arm-twisting was applied to UNMOVIC (reminding me of their CIA
infiltrated UNSCOM predecessors) to carry out this James Bond style fiasco,
since the IAEA itself was already fully aware of the insignificance to the
Iraqi nuclear program of Faleh Hamza's
work on laser enrichment.
We, the Iraqi nuclear team, declared as much in our
final report to the IAEA in 1997, pointing clearly to the demise in 1988 of Faleh Hamza's line of research. ElBaradei confirmed that fact the day after Blix brought it up in his first report to the Security Council
two weeks ago. He pointed to the personal nature of the seized papers and even
chided Blix for referring to it.
One would wonder whether this rejuvenated
"intelligence" might not have been the stale information provided by
CIA mouthpiece Khidhir Hamza,
perhaps in an attempt to stay on their payroll.
In an interview with Hamza
published in the Washington Post on February 6, 2003, Powell, in his report to
the Security Council two weeks ago, referred to information gleaned from "another
defector in 1995." "He was referring to me," Hamza
boasts.
If Khidhir Hamza has indeed managed, through his connections with
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz,
and Donald Rumsfeld, to bypass the entire
intelligence community, which disposed of him years ago, if his information is
false or silly, if he was not there when Iraq began its serious weaponization program, if he has no new sources, if his
testaments are filled with personal diatribes against Iraq, why would the
Secretary of Defense turn to him for information?
The
At the end of his report, ElBaradei
unequivocally stated that the Iraqi nuclear weapon program was "neutralized"
and that there is "no evidence" of its rejuvenation. Being part of
the U.N. system, he felt the need to add a few politically correct question
marks concerning "speed," "assurance" and
"patterns" of intentions and actions.
Certain European countries are rightly asking how long
Bush and Powell can blow into a balloon full of holes. One might also
reasonably ask about Bush and Powell's "speed,"
"assurances" and "patterns" in the misinformation game.
Powell is certainly not new to it.
From The
Scourging of Iraq, by Geoff Simons: "
Simons makes reference to an article by Maggie O'Kane, published in the Guardian Weekend, 16 December
1995, which revealed that the enterprising journalist was Jean Heller of the
St. Petersburg Times in
Eventually, the
Yet with a tongue in his own cheek, Powell claimed on
February 14, 2003 in the Toronto Star, while still blistering under Blix's and ElBaradei's reports,
that "force should always be a last resort -- I have preached this for
most of my professional life as a soldier and as a diplomat."
Perhaps this time history should not be allowed to
repeat itself.
[Imad Khadduri has a MSc in
Physics from the
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