The yellow cake that was shipped from Iraq is what was on hand when the Israelis blew up the Iraqui reactor project ca. 1981.

Prior to the Gulf War, ca. 1991, the UN inventoried the yellow cake and put it into storage UNDER UN SUPERVISION, INSPECTION, AND CONTROL where it has remained since.

The invasion forces "discovered" the yellow cake ca. 2003, and due to widespread looting security was set up to keep it in place. Since the material was known, inventoried, and controlled by the UN, there is ABSOLUTELY NO JUSTIFICATION to believe that it could have been a part of any on-going Iraqui program, or that it was "proof" of any attempt to develop WMDs, or even that there was any secret about its existence.

Again due to the looting problem, and the possibility of propaganda use by terrorists, removal from Iraq was deemed desirable. Deterioration of storage containers required repackaging before that could be done. This was a time-consuming, and low-priority, project.

The material is insufficiently active to make an effective "dirty bomb," much less a "nuclear device," but a raid by terrorists or the slight radioactivity that would be detected if it was part of a common kind of explosive device could have caused panic and could have been used by terrorists to exploit the ignorance of a population (posters above not excuded) by claiming (lying) that they had obtained/used "something nuclear."

Knowledge of its movement also could have been used for propaganda purposes, hence a realistic and justifiable attention to secrecy during the transport.

Objections from governments affected made it impossible to use the most direct shipping routes, and use of "unconventional routes" possibly increased the risks of "terrorist interventions." There is no reason to be surprised that the movement was under tight security.

The entire sequence of events associated with this material has NO BEARING on US claims of WMDs or "secret projects" on the part of Iraq, and has no effect on any claims that WMDs existed in Iraq at the time of the invasion, since the material had been "owned" by the United Nations for more than a decade before the US thought of starting their propaganda mill.

The whole non-event has the realistic diplomatic impact of a report that an Iraqui had a runny nose when he/she flew from Iraq to Canada.

John