Unjust Desserts

Have you been introduced to the Side Blog yet?

It's that strip along the left side of your screen with all the funny pictures. That's where we post current events, humorous bits, other articles we have written, or links to things we find interesting on other blogs. It's sort of a freewheeling, fast and loose section we have some fun with here. You should make a habit of checking it out because sometimes the information you find over there is incredible.

I say this because yesterday while giving it the once-over I noticed The Bastard had a little blurb entitled "Become a Nuclear Physicist in less Than a Day." I thought it was a funny titled and was going to make a smart ass quip about Bush and aluminum tubes. Then I read the piece it linked to. The quip died on my lips and was replaced with anger.

Those lying, double-crossing sons of bitches.

I know, you probably haven't read the Kos Diary this is linked to. I'm to lazy to click links too. Let me spell it out for you and save you some time (don't say Cranky doesn't like his readers). Todd Johnston wrote this brilliant piece (really, go read it) explaining why the whole Niger\Yellowcake thing was a horseshit lie used  to justify the war and scare stupid (me me me) Americans into supporting it.

Why?

Because Iraq already had a million pounds of the stuff sitting in their country for over a decade that we knew about. Worse - we left it there.

The issue of whether Iraq sought to buy yellowcake from Niger is and has always been irrelevant. The White House -- Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley; the intelligence community -- Tenet and CIA, DOE, and the State Department; Valerie Plame, and Joe Wilson, have all understood this from day one. Plame herself called the idea "crazy."

What has been utterly misunderstood, misrepresented, and lost amid the babble of speculation and intrigue, is that Iraq didn't need yellowcake. They'd had a million pounds of it sitting around "in country" for over a decade, but with no viable means whatsoever of making it into nuclear weapons.

What?? You mean we made a big deal about Iraq "allegedly" trying to buy something they already own? We used that to fuel fear, just so we could run over and play Risk - The Reality Show edition?

Still, thinking of that crazy dictator having his hands on a million pounds of radioactive material is frightening right? I mean shit, OK we overreacted to the Niger thing, but this still shows the guy is a threat right?

Wrong.

It seems yellowcake is about as dangerous as your Uncle Vinnie after a big meal. Hm probably less.

In nature, uranium is an ore much like iron. You dig it out of the ground as a big lump of uranium mixed with crud. The crud has to go, so by one of a few processes the crud is stripped away leaving mostly uranium. BTW, the industry's technical term for "crud" is "other." Crud's funnier.

The so-called "pure" uranium that's left over is very weakly radioactive and not especially dangerous. Also, like cheese in the sun, it doesn't stay "pure" for long because it reacts with the air, sometimes in ways that are unpleasant.

So countries like Niger, who mine and sell uranium force it to react a specific way to make a product that can be safely stored for a long time. They turn it into yellowcake. [1]

Yellowcake is nothing more than uranium right from the ground that has been refined and stabilized. Short of eating it, breathing it, or batter-dipping yourself in it, yellowcake is not all that dangerous either.

**This is really important.**
On a drive from NJ to CA, at the PA state line you are indeed closer to CA. But if you have to pee, I wouldn't recommend holding it.

On the drive to build a nuclear weapon from uranium, "yellowcake" is the PA state line. FYI, should you make to the mid-west, Israel will start launching U.S. cruise missles at you

Let's see if we are all straight on this. We made a big deal about an attempt to purchase  yellowcake that never happened, by a country that already possessed it, and it's not dangerous to begin with.

Is there any wonder Joe Wilson went ballistic?

Even the CIA said the yellow cake was not "particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions."  You'd like to think that someone else in the administration, someone who has years of experience with this stuff like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz or Condi Rice might have picked up on the the flaw and left it out because it made no sense  IF they were trying to be honest.

They didn't and they weren't. But we all knew that already right?

What's worse, this isn't an isolated event in the lives of Dickie, Donnie and Wolfie. No, it seems that they made a career of overruling CIA intelligence to get the results they wanted. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

Whether or not Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decides to bring indictments in the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative  --  and whether or not any crimes were actually committed  --  one element of the case is central to an understanding of what happened and why: At the time of the leak, administration supporters of the Iraq war were determined to neutralize the CIA's doubts about the White House case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, most notably nuclear weapons....

It is also not the first time  --  and it most likely won't be the last  --  that conflicts over intelligence have had momentous political consequences...

In the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon's policy of detente was under attack by some former military officials and conservative policy intellectuals, Ford administration officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were among those challenging as too soft the CIA's estimate of Moscow's military power. 

Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted to create a "Team B," which would have access to the CIA's data on the Soviets and issue its own conclusions. Cheney, as White House chief of staff, and Rumsfeld, as secretary of Defense, championed Team B, whose members included the young defense strategist Paul Wolfowitz, who a quarter-century later would be one of the chief architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

CIA Director William Colby rejected the Team B idea and was fired. Colby's successor as head of the spy agency, George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, accepted it. 

Team B's conclusion that the CIA was indeed soft on the Soviets was leaked to sympathetic journalists and generated public support for a new round of military spending, particularly on missiles. Team B's conclusions turned out, years later, to be false.

Get that? The same guys who thought they knew everything about Iraq's WMD's had a track record of spectacular failure. Would you have believed them if you knew that? Would you have bought into the "yellow cake" if you really knew the truth?

No. Or at least I'd hope not. You wouldn't go to a doctor with a history of malpractice. You wouldn't buy a car from a guy who is a known rip off. Yet 51% of the folks voted to put THESE guys back in office. Amazing.

Personally I think this is a crime greater than any Fitzsimons will be able to indict on. It's neither here nor there now. The 2000 dead soldiers aren't worried about indictments now. Still it makes me angry.

These are the things you learn about on the 'Side Blog."  If they make you angry too, and you want things to change, go over to the right side of the blog. Check out our Campaign Section. Check out some of the candidates who are trying to make a difference. Guys like Paul Hackett.

The only way to make a difference is to take some action and get active. Remember people Democracy isn't something you have, it's something you do.

If not, you get stuck eating a lot of yellowcake.