[Previous entry: "Baghdad Images"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Abuse of MLK's legacy"]

10 April 2003: "Al-Tuwaitha uncovered"

From Blogs of War, I found this article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: a US Marine Engineer unit is holding and inspecting the al-Tuwaitha complex.
For those of you not in the know, al-Tuwaitha is Iraq's primary nuclear research facility. It's where the French-supplied "Osirak" nuclear reactor* was built (which the Israeli Air Force destroyed in 1981 - nice one, lads, mazel tov) and where the bulk of the Iraqi nuclear weapons development programme took place. It seems a distinct possibility that the IAEA hardly scratched the surface regarding the place, in more ways than one.

* - The French are refreshingly honest in at least one way, which is that any government nuclear power or weapons project is assigned a name connected with death; the French nuclear missiles were called Pluton and Hades, and the reactor built at al-Tuwaitha was of a model named Osiris. The name "Osirak" came from the commingling of "Osiris" and "Irak"; the Iraqis called it "Tammuz-1", after the month the Ba'ath party seized power.
This model, incidentally, was not capable of producing weapons-grade radiological material—that was going too far for even the French—but is a light-water "research" reactor. But as the name "Tammuz-1" indicates, the Iraqis were looking to build more reactors... (source: FAS)

au currant
Black Decaf
The Illiterati
Cointelpro Tool
Norman Geras
A Fistful of Euros
Harry's Place
Plastic Gangster
Blogfonte
Tim Newman
€urosavant
Crooked Timber
Gallowglass
Mr. McGillicuddy
eameljenet
Civax
101-280
Colby Cosh
Peaktalk
Mick Hartley
Oliver Kamm

Miscellanea:

Care to contribute
to the coffee fund?