What Mr. Wilson Didn’t Look For In Africa…

It looks like he also failed to find any conclusive evidence that the Executive Branch of the US government engaged in an active conspiracy to falsely claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium. If there were 550 metric tons of the stuff to quietly remove, and if Iraq is not exactly a hot bed of uranium mining and refinement, Hussein had to have procured said Uranium from somewhere. In other words, Hussein did exactly what Colin Powell announced that the Iraqi despot was doing.

To put 550 Tons of Yellowcake in perspective, the layman has to examine what could be done with this quantity. British Nuclear Physicist, Dr. Norman Dombey, estimates a yield of 142 nuclear weapons. The source does not specify the mega-tonnage, throw weight or maximum effective ranges of the 142 nukes, however, Dr. Dombey does offer subjective opinion on the potential scope of a weapons program seeded with 550 metric tons of yellowcake.

"Iraq already had far more uranium than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme."

Dr. Dombey continues.

"You have a warehouse containing 500 tons of natural uranium; you need 25 kilograms of U235 to build one weapon. How many nuclear weapons can you build?

"The answer is 142."

Whether Joe Wilson was deliberately oblivious to this, when he wrote his polemic “What I Didn’t Find in Africa” is not terribly relevant. He would not have behaved any differently had he known about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake. He had his conclusions packed in his suitcase, before he went “fact-finding” in Niger. I hope he enjoyed sipping his mint tea.

I can imagine Scooter Libby’s reaction to this news. Not to mention, Karl Rove’s. Even if Joe Wilson was innocently unaware that Saddam Hussein already possessed 550 metric tons of Yellowcake, at the time he wrote his op-ed for the Times, he still should feel condign shame and embarrassment. That is, if the political celebrities of the anti-war left still have it in their genetic make-up.

Joe Wilson did say once.

"At the end of the day it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."--Joseph Wilson, former ambassador

Now it should be of keen interest to the American tax-payer to do the same with Mr. Wilson and his winsome, non-covert bride. That was $M2.58 our nation spent chasing down the false accusations of that celebrity sleuth, Joe Wilson. That’s an awful lot of time and money spent to investigate public officials and detract from their official duties over a false allegation. The question becomes what did Joe Wilson know, and when did Joe Wilson know it?

Jim Lobe, of CommonDreams.org, used to have sympathy for the poor, embittered Bush supporters who believed that Saddam Hussein had yellowcake. He offered us the following contempt-laden olive branch.

To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq."

So now that the 550 metric tons of uranium have been front and center on the DrudgeReport, how does Jim Lobe relate to this fact without substantial cognitive dissonance? It helps if his idea of thinking could fit on yet another left-wing bumper sticker. Perhaps he has suppressed awareness of the 550 tons of weapons-grade uranium removed from Iraq to Canada, by not reading anything newsier than The Daily Kos.

We won’t get anywhere near the truth on this one, and Joe Wilson will still go down in history as a folk hero of the sleazy, Beltway Bureaucrat Class. As the 550 metric tons of yellowcake are put in storage they are taken away from where terrorists and despots could put them to horrific use. We do get one thing that Joe Wilson and his evil, conniving bog-trotters and pitchmen could never find in Africa or anywhere else.

We get a marginally safer world, with one fewer threat to annihilate millions with one push of the button. That would seem to justify the reason George W. Bush took down the government of Saddam Hussein and set out to rebuild Iraq in the first place. It kind of makes me wish President Bush would re-hang that “Mission Accomplished” Banner that’s been languishing from disuse.