> ... asserted his claim to Kuwait *after* acquiring nuclear weapons -
> and then began to talk about securing the Muslim Holy Land as leader
> of the Arab people....
What nuclear weapons? He wasn't building any.
On the contrary, Saddam Hussein's government was actively working on
them. That is why some people were worried in 2002 -- they really did
not think that Saddam Hussein was lying when he claimed to be
continuing the effort.
That is one of the reasons the Blix reports were so worrisome. The
reports could not provide assurances that the Iraqis were lying and
that they were not pursuing nuclear or, in a weaker situation in 2000,
radiological weapons. (And the lack of US follow up means we still
lack assurances.)
Indeed, in the latter 1980s and early 1990s, to separate isotopes of
uranium, Saddam Hussein's government was building calutrons, of all
things.
The US abandoned calutrons in the late 1940s or early 1950s as being
too inefficent. In WWII, the US found that they separated more
efficiently when provided partially enriched uranium, from the
diffusion plant, than unenriched uranium. The US used calutrons
because Lawrence knew how to design them and because they worked. As
far as I know, the Iraqis never tried to build a diffusion plant.
(There is the story that one of the Manhattan project people decided
that silver would be good for calutrons' wire. Silver is a better
conductor than copper and copper was being used for cartridges and
other military purposes. The man, perhaps Gen. Groves, visited the
Secretary of the Treasury to ask for several tons of silver, which the
US government kept as backing for its `silver certificates' that could
be redeemed in silver dollars. I got some when I was a child; but I
don't have them any more. The Secretary of the Treasury is reputed to
have said, `in this office, we speak of ounces of silver, not of
tons'. But he loaned the silver.)
As far as I know, the modern equivalents of calutrons are still used
to produce highly purified isotopes.
I think that a good portion, maybe all, of the uranium used in the
Hiroshima bomb went through calutrons. (The Trinity and Nagasaki
bombs used plutonium.)
In the 1990s, pictures of the Iraqi calutron vacuum vessels were
released by the UN inspectors and I saw them in Aviation Week and
Space Technology. At the same time, or a bit later, I read about
calutron history and design.
Also, at that time, Saddam Hussein was researching delivery vehicles.
People laugh about one of his delivery vehicles, his big gun. But it
could have been defended against Iranian attack and maybe Saudi and
Kuwaiti attack, too. (It could not have been defended against US
attack.)
The inspectors did not discover either the bomb project or the
delivery projects for some time -- they were fooled.
--
Robert J. Chassell
[EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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