Joseph Cirincione and Alexis Orton at the Carnegie Endowment have just put out a very useful short “analytic brief”:http://www.ceip.org/files/nonprolif/templates/Publications.asp?p=8&PublicationID=1595 on Iraq’s putative efforts to obtain uranium in Niger.
Their conclusion:
bq. The numbers tell us that Iraq’s alleged interest in Niger uranium – even if true – never represented an immediate or significant threat to the United States. Simple math and common sense confirm that the claim should never have appeared in administration statements as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapon program.
{ 11 comments }
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.10.04 at 9:51 pm
“The numbers tell us that Iraq’s alleged interest in Niger uranium – even if true – never represented an immediate or significant threat to the United States.”
If true, Iraq’s interest in Niger’s uranium showed that Saddam was not abandoning his nuclear program. Which, unless you believe that intelligence services could catch every single attempt, means that he was a significant threat to the United States. The problem was the fact that even under the strictest sanctions that the international community could tolerate, Saddam was still willing to pursue nuclear weapons.
Luc 08.10.04 at 10:11 pm
Which, unless you believe that intelligence services could catch every single attempt, means that he was a significant threat to the United States.
You could read the previous paragraph in the original document, but then that wasn’t the point you were trying to make, was it?
Even on a much smaller scale, French, international or U.S. authorities would certainly have detected such activity-especially after Niger signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA in June 2002.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.10.04 at 11:28 pm
Which is extra-fantabulous until you realize that Saddam might try avenues that might not include Niger.
dipnut 08.10.04 at 11:45 pm
Whoa, dude. I am, like, totally rethinking that whole war thing now.
fyreflye 08.11.04 at 1:34 am
There’s a great deal of testimony from captured prisoners at Abu Ghraib that Saddam was praying daily to Allah to have yellowcake dropped into Iraq by a passing UFO. You certainly can’t rule out the possibility…
praktike 08.11.04 at 2:37 am
Interestingly enough, this point was made by the CIA in its original analysis.
Funny, that.
Luc 08.11.04 at 3:00 am
fyrefly,
You should never underestimate the amount of cunning and deception of the treacherous Saddam and his Baathist followers. The score is still 12.000 pages of lies vs. a powerpoint presentation of unmistaken facts.
Still funny reading that speech. Complaining that Saddam didn’t arrest Zarqawi – “we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi” – but then when Saddam was gone, it suddenly wasn’t that easy to find him anymore.
jf 08.11.04 at 7:23 pm
How is evidence that he couldn’t have succeeded in getting everything he needed from one place evidence that the threat was unimportant? Since no one ever claimed he got any yellowcake from Niger, why should it matter how much he could have gotten? Wasn’t the only thing this claim was used for a statement about intention? Does anyone doubt his intention?
jif 08.11.04 at 7:43 pm
Well, if bad intentions are the sole basis for war, then fab-o, that will pass muster. But intention is a pretty low bar to set, and I’m not really sure that is a workable criterea for pre-emptive war. In the case of going to war to prevent “a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud,” size does matter. Intention without means does not an immediate threat make. Or even a “gathering” threat. “Intent” matters in murder cases where the crime has already been committed, and where the law recognizes the difference between a planned and a spontaneous act. It does not extrapolate well to the foreign policy level. This is a “minority report” scenerio- claiming to have prevented something because the intent has been read. But who’s floating in the bathtub seeing the future?
jif 08.11.04 at 7:43 pm
In response to jf: Well, if bad intentions are the sole basis for war, then fab-o, that will pass muster. But intention is a pretty low bar to set, and I’m not really sure that is a workable criterea for pre-emptive war. In the case of going to war to prevent “a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud,” size does matter. Intention without means does not an immediate threat make. Or even a “gathering” threat. “Intent” matters in murder cases where the crime has already been committed, and where the law recognizes the difference between a planned and a spontaneous act. It does not extrapolate well to the foreign policy level. This is a “minority report” scenerio- claiming to have prevented something because the intent has been read. But who’s floating in the bathtub seeing the future?
jif 08.11.04 at 7:44 pm
In response to jf: Well, if bad intentions are the sole basis for war, then fab-o, that will pass muster. But intention is a pretty low bar to set, and I’m not really sure that is a workable criterea for pre-emptive war. In the case of going to war to prevent “a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud,” size does matter. Intention without means does not an immediate threat make. Or even a “gathering” threat. “Intent” matters in murder cases where the crime has already been committed, and where the law recognizes the difference between a planned and a spontaneous act. It does not extrapolate well to the foreign policy level. This is a “minority report” scenerio- claiming to have prevented something because the intent has been read. But who’s floating in the bathtub seeing the future?
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