President Bush's decision to concede the argument that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction has hurt his credibility badly, with a majority of Americans now saying he lied when he took the country to war based on a threat that didn't exist.
A Gallup survey last week found that a majority of Americans - 51 percent - now believe that Bush "deliberately misled the people when he asserted Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
On Friday, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that 50 percent no longer think he's an honest leader - with 48 percent disagreeing.
That's why it's so abominably tragic - and downright irresponsible - for the Bush White House to continue to ignore the evidence that Saddam Hussein did, in fact, pose a WMD threat.
Here's a few questions media pollsters never ask - featuring undisputed facts the White House needs to begin spotlighting:
� If you knew that Saddam Hussein was sitting on a stockpile of 500 tons of yellowcake uranium - and storing it at his nuclear weapons development plant - would you still think the Iraqi dictator posed no WMD threat?
� If you learned that Saddam had ordered his top nuclear physicist to hide centrifuge parts from U.N. weapons inspectors and keep them available for future use - would it have been a good idea to leave Saddam in power?
� And if you knew that Saddam had begun to enrich that uranium to the point where weapons inspectors feared it could be turned into a terrorist dirty bomb - would you still think it was a mistake to launch a preemptive invasion?
Just last year, the New York Times - along with several other mainstream news organizations - offered new details about Saddam's 500 ton uranium stockpile - in a story prompted by the U.S. Energy Department's decision to remove 1.8 tons of the nuclear fuel that the Iraqi dictator had partially enriched.
Some highlights from the Times report:
The United States has informed an international agency that oversees nuclear materials that it intends to move hundreds of tons of uranium from a sealed repository south of Baghdad to a more secure place outside Iraq, Western diplomats close to the agency say. . . .
The repository, at Tuwaitha, a centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program until it was largely shut down after the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, holds more than 500 tons of uranium, none of it enriched enough to be used directly in a nuclear weapon. . . .
Nuclear experts had mixed reactions to the possibility of moving the uranium. The president of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright, said officials had long privately discussed plans to take the uranium out of Iraq.
"I would say it's a wise thing to do," Mr. Albright said. "The idea of theft isn't crazy." . . .
Of the uranium, 500 tons is naturally occurring ore or yellowcake, a slightly processed concentrate that cannot be directly used in a bomb. Some 1.8 tons is classified as low-enriched uranium, a more potent form but still not sufficient for a weapon.
Still, said Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the low-enriched version could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions.
"A country like Iran," Mr. Cochran said, "could convert that into weapons-grade material with a lot fewer centrifuges than would be required with natural uranium."
The centrifuges are used to purify the material. . . .
Whatever its actual health risks, the uranium could sow terror over wide areas if dispersed by a conventional explosive. Such a "dirty bomb" remains a prime concern for counterterrorism experts in the United States and abroad. [END OF TIMES EXCERPT - May 22, 2004]
"Saddam kept funding the IAEC [Iraq Atomic Energy Commission] from 1991 ... until the war in 2003," Dr. Obedi revealed in his 2004 book, "The Bomb in My Garden."
"I was developing the centrifuge for the weapons" right through 1997, he explained.
And after that, Dr. Obeidi said, Saddam ordered him under penalty of death to keep the technology available to resume Iraq's nuke program at a moment's notice.
Dr. Obeidi said he buried "the full set of blueprints, designs - everything to restart the centrifuge program - along with some critical components of the centrifuge" under the garden of his Baghdad home.
"I had to maintain the program to the bitter end," he explained.
Despite the compelling nature of Dr. Obedi's revelations and the facts about al Tuwaitha - Bush officials almost never discuss this information.
That's probably because Saddam's uranium stockpile was actually not considered illegal according to officials at the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, who assured the world they were monitoring the nuclear fuel and had the situation well in hand.
Of course, the IAEA had no idea about Dr. Obedi's centrifuge stash, since he revealed his story to U.S. interrogators only after Saddam had been toppled. Then there's the dubious proposition of trusting IAEA assurances about rogue countries and their inability to develop nukes, especially since the bang-up job the agency did keeping an eye on North Korea.
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