Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2003 | 8:46 a.m.
There has been much ado about the accuracy of a brief statement President Bush made in his State of the Union address. Those 16 words were inserted into the carefully crafted address because they had to be there. That was the premise for his argument for preemptive war on Iraq.
Here is the full argument: Saddam is shopping for uranium. If he gets his hands on uranium he will make an atom bomb, drop it on New York, and this time the death toll will be 300,000.
So let's look at this obviously fabricated premise: The United Nations controlled Iraq's exports and imports. Economic sanctions impoverished a once-prosperous nation. Saddam wanted above all else to get these sanctions removed. Then why on Earth would he risk everything trying to smuggle uranium into Iraq when he already had a warehouse full of the stuff?
Saddam's uranium hoard was no secret. Before Saddam booted them out of Iraq, the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors inventoried this uranium. Saddam's dream of acquiring nuclear weapons collapsed when Israel demolished his reactor. He knew Israel's Air Force would destroy any plant he built to enrich uranium. So his uranium hoard remained in storage for more than two decades.
The postwar plan didn't include securing this uranium stockpile -- it was looted after Baghdad fell. I am assuming that there is a postwar plan, although, like that huge stockpile of WMD, there is little evidence it exists.
VERNON BOSTICK
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