The US, The UN and Iraq

<You are still very confused in your thinking>

<I know you are more intelligent than that.>

trespasser:

While you may have some cogent argument in between these two insults, they preclude me from reading it.

I invited challenges to my logic and you chose to assault my intelligence instead. There's a poster on another forum that does this same thing; you wouldn't happen to be massagattos on Abuzz by any chance, would you?

You really should make a stronger attempt to interface on this board in a more civil manner.

You'll gain extra credibility, not to mention style points, if you succeed.

And this doesn't matter why?

Quote:
"It should be noted," Fleischer said, "that the attempted acquisition of such tubes is prohibited under the United Nations resolutions in any case." U.N. sanctions restrict Iraq's ability to import "dual-use" items that potentially could be used for weapons.


Prohibited is prohibited, period. Rockets or uranium enrichment, Iraq is denied such hardware by International Law. Lots of straws are being grasped at, but I don't see a raft being assembled from them.



timber

Bush said were "used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."

Rice describing the tubes as "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

It was by far the most prominent, detailed assertion by the White House

But according to government officials and weapons experts, the claim now appears to be seriously in doubt.

After weeks of investigation, U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq are increasingly confident that the aluminum tubes were never meant for enriching uranium

After weeks of investigation, U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq are increasingly confident that the aluminum tubes were never meant for enriching uranium

Moreover, there were clues from the beginning that should have raised doubts about claims that the tubes were part of a secret Iraqi nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. and international experts on uranium enrichment. The quantity and specifications of the tubes -- narrow, silver cylinders measuring 81 millimeters in diameter and about a meter in length -- made them ill-suited to enrich uranium without extensive modification, the experts said.

"It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium," said one expert familiar with the investigation of Iraq's attempted acquisition. "But you'd have to believe that Iraq deliberately ordered the wrong stock and intended to spend a great deal of time and money reworking each piece."

"If the U.S. government puts out bad information it runs a risk of undermining the good information it possesses," said David Albright, a former IAEA weapons inspector who has investigated Iraq's past nuclear programs extensively. "In this case, I fear that the information was put out there for a short-term political goal: to convince people that Saddam Hussein is close to acquiring nuclear weapons."

Albright said. "This incident discredits that effort at a time when we can least afford it."