Weapons-Grade Plutonium Possibly Found at Iraqi Nuke Complex

Investigators Tuesday discovered that Al-Tuwaitha hides another city. This underground nexus of labs, warehouses, and bomb-proof offices was hidden from the public and, perhaps, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors who combed the site just two months ago, until the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Engineers discovered it three days ago.

So the Marine's discovery makes the former atomic inspector wonder if the Iraqis went to the colossal expense of pumping enough water to build the underground city because no reasonable inspector would think anything might be built underground there.

Nobody would expect it,� Hamza said. �Nobody would think twice about going back there.�

www.pittsburghlive.com...

U.S. Marines may have found weapons-grade plutonium in a massive underground facility discovered beneath Iraq's Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex, an embedded reporter told Fox News Thursday.

While officials aren't prepared to call the discovery a "smoking gun," two preliminary tests conducted on the material have indicated that it may be weapons-grade plutonium.

www.foxnews.com...

U.S. Marines near Baghdad may have found a mobile biological- or chemical-weapons lab, Fox News' Rick Leventhal reported Thursday afternoon.

Resembling a refrigerated truck from the outside, and containing guided-missile support equipment, the truck was found to have a false internal wall that concealed an remote-controlled electronic pulley-and-winch system and several open bins and containers

www.foxnews.com...

I just heard about this on the radio on the way home. They interviewed John Tiernan (SP?), a former UN weapons inspector who worked with Scott Ritter in Bagdad.

He indicated that he found this very cache of material during UN inspections the first time around, and reported it first to the US military, who ignored him, then to IAEA, who basically tossed his report in the garbage.

The story I heard about the likely source of this material was from the nuclear reactor bombed by Israel in 1981. Apparently, the reactor was under construction, and the plutonium/uranium was being stored offsite and was not damaged in the raid. Immediately after the raid, the Iraqis spread some material around the reactor site so that IAEA inspectors would pick up hot rad hits, and confirm that the fuel core was also destroyed in the raid.

This brings up the question of just how much material was there in the first place? Is any of it missing? If some is missing, where did it go, what was it used for???

without the words "possibly" or "might be", "alleged", etc. I'm going to stay guarded, and just hope that the cia spooks are cooking up some evidence that doesn't come off as being planted...