What Is This World Coming To?

Remember the famous “sixteen word lie?” It was the lead story in every liberal newspaper in the world for weeks:

“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”

It was those sixteen words that Ambassador Joe Wilson wrote his NYTimes op-ed piece about. It was Joe Wilson’s op-ed piece that brought Wilson national attention, which in turn shone a spotlight on his family, which of course led to the revelation that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.

Pretty much everything that has been said or done about Iraq and Saddam Hussein over the past five years has included some variation of those sixteen words.

Before we go on, let me clarify something. To this moment, the British government still stands behind its intel report, which is all Bush said in those sixteen words. Read them with me one more time.

“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”

So why isn’t the mainstream liberal press all over this AP story?

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What’s now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

But wait! I thought Saddam Hussein didn’t have a nuclear program? Wasn’t that all made up by the Bush administration to trick America into going to war? Wasn’t the absence of evidence taken to be evidence of absence, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld memorably put it?

“Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq,” said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.”

This doesn’t seem to make sense. When did this five hundred and fifty metric TONS of yellowcake uranium show up in Iraq? Was it AFTER the war that was ostensibly waged over Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program? The nuclear program that the Democrats STILL deny existed?

“The yellowcake wasn’t the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha. Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.

The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam’s nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.”

“Years of cleanup are ahead” regarding “Saddam’s nuclear efforts . . .” WHAT nuclear efforts? Saddam Hussein DIDN’T HAVE A NUKE PROGRAM. Everybody knows that. The New York Times said he didn’t. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that was a Bush “lie.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Saddam didn’t have a nuke program. So did Joe Wilson, John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barack Hussein Obama, Al Gore, John Murtha, Jim McDermott, David Bonior, Jim Webb, oh, and al-Qaeda and its surrogates . . . so what’s the deal here?

Somebody lied about whether or not Saddam had a nuclear program. If it wasn’t the Bush administration . . . well, that tends to narrow the field somewhat, doesn’t it?