AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq
By BRIAN MURPHY,AP
Posted: 2008-07-05 14:05:36
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.
"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.
While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" - a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material - it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.
"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.
The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives - kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.
And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.
Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger - and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims - led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.
"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.
Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.
Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.
Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.
An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.
But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.
At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers - some leaking or weakened by corrosion - and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.
In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.
On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.
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.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.
Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.
But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive "hot zones" entombed in concrete during Saddam's rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take "many years."
The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.
A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.
A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Many dispute the anti-Democratic suspension of the Hillary Clinton Campaign and are still fighting to see her as the Democratic Nominee. It is an insult to the American Public that the Democratic Party believes they can use their Multi Level Marketing techniques to sell Americans a corrupt, unqualified candidate that will allow them to exploit America for whatever the Bush Administration has not already plundered.
Find Out: Coalition online at JustSayNoDeal.com
Get Involved: Democrats – Take back your Party!
Take Action: Speak Up (Post, Blog, Talk to you neighbors)
Take Action: Contact your Democratic Representatives and let them know you want to see the Democratic Superdelegates in your state elect Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Nominee at the DNC Convention August 25, 2008.
I was not over “it” when George W. Bush was “elected” in 2000.
I was not over “it” when George W. Bush was “elected” in 2004.
I was not over “it” when Barack H. Obama was selected June 2008.
I will never get over the love of my Country.
I will never stop asserting the founding principals of the United States of America.
I will not surrender my Country to fraud and exploitation.
I will not lapse into denial for a false sense of security.
I will not follow corruption under the guise of unity.
I do not need to bear arms to fight for my Country.
I do not need to make you believe me.
I will be seeing and saying and doing.
I will be thinking and talking and living.
And that which is right and is good will empower us as deceit and deception are revealed.
the consititution give each house of congress the right to detrimine its OWN rules. you dont have to change the consitiution to change senate rules.
besides it was TOM DASCHLE that changed the rules to 60 votes(used to be 51) in 2001!!!!!!!
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPrint.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200112\POL20011231b.html
see this porves my point better then any post i can write myself. you libs are so blinded by hate that you dont even know how the government works but yet you believe that cons have takin it over and are evil.
That's what I call "science" that no one can argue with.
How could anyone doubt these people when they tell us what world wide weather will be 10 years from now?
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Over the past decade or so, improved software, computers, satellites and aircraft have meant a steady improvement in track forecasts, but the improvement is incremental, not revolutionary. Today's three-day forecast is as accurate as a two-day forecast during the late 1980s.
Cincinnati, Ohio (PRWEB) June 24, 2008 -- As the issue of torturing foreign suspects plays out in Washington and the news media, there is a little-known aspect of the torture issue that some would find surprising and hopefully alarming. These issues are being brought to light by Freedom from Covert Harassment and Surveillance (FFCHS). FFCHS, a human rights organization, whose membership is comprised of victims both in the US and internationally has retained attorney Jonathan Wilson to represent them in combating these issues. Most recently, Attorney Wilson has addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy requesting a hearing and congressional investigation into FFCHS allegations. These allegations include non-consensual experimentation with Directed Energy Weapons (DEW's) and organized stalking perpetrated by the US military and other intelligence agencies, corporations, and teams of private citizens.
In March of 2008 FFCHS, in collaboration with Attorney Wilson, faced a challenging and ongoing crisis with compelling evidence pointing toward the need for governmental oversight and legislation that would protect targeted individuals against the use of DEW's and organized stalking via covert surveillance. DEW's are a class of military armaments that project sound and eight types of electromagnetic energy in the full spectrum - radio waves, microwaves, infrared waves, visible light, ultraviolet light, x rays, gamma rays, and cosmic waves. DEW's function by manipulating sound and energy with various wavelengths and frequencies used in current military applications and for covert purposes intended to torture, induce auditory effects, and inflict internal injury to unwitting civilian targets. Currently, the US Military Commissions Act of 2006, signed by President Bush contradicts the International Declaration of Human Rights in that it sanctions inhumane treatment and torture. In a web of complex overlays there is no protection for victims. FFCHS believes that immediate intervention from Congress is imperative to achieve the goal of freedom from DEW abuses, unwarranted surveillance, organized stalking, and harassment. Attorney Wilson states, "Many citizens are desperate to be freed from the disturbing, intrusive and oppressive targeting."
And now they plan to outsource the last remaining large US industry, the auto industry. By the end of next year, all three of the largest US car manufacturers will be outsourced to Mexico unless we revolt and stop our evil corrupt government and their obsession to help outsource all our jobs. Hundreds of millions of more jobs will be lost. You though crime was bad in Detroit now, just wait and see when all the auto jobs are gone.
Our government leaders laugh and say, “ if you don’t like it too bad, move to Mexico”
Since our evil corrupt government helped to outsource all the other large manufacturing companies, might as well finish it up by outsourcing the last remaining US manufacturer, the auto industries.
If you don’t want to be guaranteed to lose your job, better start protesting against our evil government and better hope that greedy old asshole doesn’t win in November or we’ll all be up shit’s creek, except the filthy rich who will make out just fine. .
WHY ARE YOU HERE?? WHY HAVENT THEY SHUT YOUR DOWN? WHY HAVENT THEY BEAT DOWN YOUR DOOR WITH THIER NAZI JACKBOOT AND TAKEN YOU TO JAIL FOR DISSENTING?????
Date: 2008-07-06 01:22:45
PostID: 744166120
Title: (politics) Why can't the con troll post with a name? (Dearborn)
Because its America you dumbass, he doesnt have to do anything he dosnt want too. so go suck it there Suckie!
p.s. Do you have any kind of a life at all? Is this really all you do? Post on CL all day everyday? Its a friggin holiday, go out to a BarBQ, or do you not have friends that would invite you to one? You must be a very Sad, Lonely man.
Boy, you have no grasp of the political process. NO, you silly man, Bush did not hoodwink us. Cheney was a major part of the process, Rumsfeld, Pearle, Wolfowitz, the con media repeating the drum beat of war.
Indeed Bush and Cheney doctored CIA intel to suit their war agenda.
Funny how you cherry pick points to address and ignore the bulk. I addressed his points about peer review and consensus. Please re-read my post, or have a learned liberal read it out loud for you. Perhaps I was too oblique, you seem to need things spoon fed to you.
He was outright wrong about the new ice age of the 70s as well as the UN. I explained both.
You need to relax. Being so ignorant and filled with rage as you (and most cons of our ilk) is no way to go through life.
BTW- your whining about flagging makes you look mentally ill. I haven't been on this board since late last night. You're just acting silly now.
But please address this post, its central to your argument and lack of credibility. You seem to think any source that contradicts the con talking points cannot be trusted and isn't legitimate. Any major organization, any scientific body, any major study, etc... Then you always counter it with partisan clap trap. Your credibility with this and most issues is non-existent.
Date: 2008-07-06 08:09:43
PostID: 744317618
Title: (politics) What are the global warming fans afraid of?
Why do they have to flag off the posts that offer contrary evidence. If their case was so strong, you'd think they'd welcome arguments they could debate. Instead, they disappear the evidence. Just like the IPCC does.
and what are you going to impeach bush over? the war? well then you have to impeach hilary,kerry, edwards, reid and the entire UN sercurt council.(they all voted for it)
and obama wasnt even in the senate at the time but im sure he would have voted for it since he says whatever is convenient to whatever crowd his happens to be speaking to!!
Date: 2008-07-06 07:45:34
PostID: 744297779
Title: (politics) flagging is my religion, signed Rev. (Dearborn)
If your posting was wrongly flagged down (2% of flagged ads are) please accept our apologies and feel free to repost.
Sorry for the hassle, and thanks for your understanding.
Title: (politics) pseudo science is my religion, signed Rev. (Dearborn)
Typical BS from the guy who has spewed more pseudo science than the next 20 posters here. (BTW We're still waiting for "proof" that U.S. oil companies have failed to drill on 44 million acres that contain 71% of U.S. oil capacity) More of your "science"? Before offering "proof" on global warming, why not take a whack at proving your oil capacity claims? After all, you made that claim 28,793 times.
As far as your claim that 100% of peer reviewed stores favor the religion of global warming; that's must more BS. The IPCC routinely rejected vast numbers of reviews of their findings when the reviews did not agree with global warming religion.
The IPCC would have us believe that its reports are diligently reviewed by many hundreds of scientists and that these reviewers endorse the contents of the report. An analysis of the reviewers' comments for the scientific assessment report by Working Group I show a very different and very worrying story.
The comments for Working Group I are the only set of reviewers' comments to be made available to the public, and only then thanks to use of US Freedom of Information laws rather than a willingness on the part of the IPCC to allow people to examine the material. Surely all people should be able to examine the involvement and thinking of their governments and the reviewers from their own countries because it is the people who will most certainly bear the economic and political costs of any resultant actions.
Perhaps the IPCC is simply worried that exposing the reviewers' comments and the responses to those comments to close scrutiny will reveal the delusions of thoroughness and widespread consensus.
As usual, slappy / deerborn is talking out his ass.
However, when you look at mainstream news stories regarding global warming, 50% of the stories are anti-global warming. But when you look at peer reviewed scientific journals, 100% of the stories are in favor of global warming. Do you get it? When the article has to stand up to scientific scrutiny and held to the fire by trained scientists, its in favor of the global warming concept.
Maybe we could all take a lesson and concede a few points to either side, yeah the Hummer is wasteful, but what to do with the Prius batteries when junked?
The majority of world governments can't be trusted
the IPCC can't be trusted
the mainstream media can't be trusted.
the majority of Americans can't be trusted.
Major scientific associations can't be trusted
Ice core samples can't be trusted
Observable evidence can't be trusted
because they are all involved in a vast conspiracy and on the payroll of AL Gore, eh?
The only sources that can be trusted are conservative blogs, conservative editorials, Hannity, AM radio, organizations founded by republicans that are funded by the oil industry and an other source that agrees with what you already believe.
Not only does the con troll try to pass off partisan editorials as fact, but he tries to disprove 2008 science by bringing up 1975 science.
Sorry con. But the 1970s "global cooling" scenario your article was speaking of as "proof" that global warming is an entirely different issue.
THe cooling in the 70 was entirely based on particulate matter and fluorocarbons in the atmosphere reflecting sunlight back into space. A vastly different scenario than greenhouse gasses trapping heat.
But the silly thing about your partisan hackery is that without knowing it you posted the very best argument for government action.
Govt action limited the particulate emissions and is closing the ozone hole.
Not only that, but the editorial piece that you cut and pasted complains about the UN not being a scientific organization, yet the IPCC is and their reports were put together by 2500 scientists.
Yet again, you show your own lack of confidence in your own posts by not endorsing them with your name. Very sad!
Peer Review, Publication in Top Journals, Scientific Consensus, and So Forth
May 7, 2007
Robert Higgs
History News Network
In following the discussion of global warming and related issues in the press and the blogosphere, I have been struck repeatedly by the assumption or expression of certain beliefs that strike me as highly problematical. Many writers who are not scientists themselves are trading on the prestige of science and the authority of scientists. Reference to “peer-reviewed research” and to an alleged “scientific consensus” are regarded as veritable knock-out blows by many commentators. Yet many of those who make such references appear to me to be more or less ignorant of how science as a form of knowledge-seeking and scientists as individual professionals operate, especially nowadays, when national governments―most notably the U.S. government―play such an overwhelming role in financing scientific research and hence in determining which scientists rise to the top and which fall by the wayside.
I do not pretend to have expertise in climatology or any of the related physical sciences, so nothing I might say about strictly climatological or related physical-scientific matters deserves any weight. However, I have thirty-nine years of professional experience―twenty-six as a university professor, including fifteen at a major research university, and then thirteen as a researcher, writer, and editor―in close contact with scientists of various sorts, including some in the biological and physical sciences and many in the social sciences and demography. I have served as a peer reviewer for more than thirty professional journals and as a reviewer of research proposals for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and a number of large private foundations. I was the principal investigator of a major NSF-funded research project in the field of demography. So, I think I know something about how the system works.
It does not work as outsiders seem to think.
Peer review, on which lay people place great weight, varies from being an important control, where the editors and the referees are competent and responsible, to being a complete farce, where they are not. As a rule, not surprisingly, the process operates somewhere in the middle, being more than a joke but less than the nearly flawless system of Olympian scrutiny that outsiders imagine it to be. Any journal editor who desires, for whatever reason, to reject a submission can easily do so by choosing referees he knows full well will knock it down; likewise, he can easily obtain favorable referee reports. As I have always counseled young people whose work was rejected, seemingly on improper or insufficient grounds, the system is a crap shoot. Personal vendettas, ideological conflicts, professional jealousies, methodological disagreements, sheer self-promotion, and a great deal of plain incompetence and irresponsibility are no strangers to the scientific world; indeed, that world is rife with these all-too-human attributes. In no event can peer review ensure that research is correct in its procedures or its conclusions. The history of every science is a chronicle of one mistake after another. In some sciences these mistakes are largely weeded out in the course of time; in others they persist for extended periods; and in some sciences, such as economics, actual scientific retrogression may continue for generations under the misguided (but self-serving) belief that it is really progress.
At any given time, consensus may exist about all sorts of matters in a particular science. In retrospect, however, that consensus is often seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about to enter a new ice age. Drastic proposals were made, such as exploding hydrogen bombs over the polar icecaps (to melt them) or damming the Bering Strait (to prevent cold Arctic water from entering the Pacific Ocean), to avert this impending disaster. Well-reputed scientists, not just uninformed wackos, made such proposals. How quickly we forget.
Researchers who employ unorthodox methods or theoretical frameworks have great difficulty under modern conditions in getting their findings published in the “best” journals or, at times, in any scientific journal. Scientific innovators or creative eccentrics always strike the great mass of practitioners as nut cases―until their findings become impossible to deny, which often occurs only after one generation’s professional ring-masters have died off. Science is an odd undertaking: everybody strives to make the next breakthrough, yet when someone does, he is often greeted as if he were carrying the ebola virus. Too many people have too much invested in the reigning ideas; for those people an acknowledgment of their own idea’s bankruptcy is tantamount to an admission that they have wasted their lives. Often, perhaps to avoid cognitive dissonance, they never admit that their ideas were wrong. Most important, as a rule, in science as elsewhere, to get along, you must go along.
Research worlds, in their upper reaches, are pretty small. Leading researchers know all the major players and what everybody else is doing. They attend the same conferences, belong to the same societies, send their grad students to be postdocs in the other people’s labs, review one another’s work for the NSF, NIH, or other government funding organizations, and so forth. If you do not belong to this tight fraternity, it will prove very, very difficult for you to gain a hearing for your work, to publish in a “top” journal, to acquire a government grant, to receive an invitation to participate in a scientific-conference panel discussion, or to place your grad students in decent positions. The whole setup is tremendously incestuous; the interconnections are numerous, tight, and close.
In this context, a bright young person needs to display cleverness in applying the prevailing orthodoxy, but it behooves him not to rock the boat by challenging anything fundamental or dear to the hearts of those who constitute the review committees for the NSF, NIH, and other funding organizations. Modern biological and physical science is, overwhelmingly, government-funded science. If your work, for whatever reason, does not appeal to the relevant funding agency’s bureaucrats and academic review committees, you can forget about getting any money to carry out your proposal. Recall the human frailties I mentioned previously; they apply just as much in the funding context as in the publication context. Indeed, these two contexts are themselves tightly linked: if you don’t get funding, you’ll never produce publishable work, and if you don’t land good publications, you won’t continue to receive funding.
When your research implies a “need” for drastic government action to avert a looming disaster or to allay some dire existing problem, government bureaucrats and legislators (can you say “earmarks”?) are more likely to approve it. If the managers at the NSF, NIH, and other government funding agencies gave great amounts of money to scientists whose research implies that no disaster looms or no dire problem now exists or even that although a problem exists, no currently feasible government policy can do anything to solve it without creating greater problems in the process, members of Congress would be much less inclined to throw money at the agency, with all the consequences that an appropriations cutback implies for bureaucratic thriving. No one has to explain all these things to the parties involved; they are not idiots, and they understand how the wheels are greased in their tight little worlds.
Finally, we need to develop a much keener sense of what a scientist is qualified to talk about and what he is not qualified to talk about. Climatologists, for example, are qualified to talk about the science of climatology (though subject to all the intrusions upon pure science I have already mentioned). They are not qualified to say, however, that “we must act now” by imposing government “solutions” of some imagined sort. They are not professionally knowledgeable about what degree of risk is better or worse for people to take; only the individuals who bear the risk can make that decision, because it’s a matter of personal preference, not a matter of science. Climatologists know nothing about cost/benefit cosiderations; indeed, most mainstream economists themselves are fundamentally misguided about such matters (adopting, for example, procedures and assumptions about the aggregation of individual valuations that lack a sound scientific basis). Climate scientists are the best qualified people to talk about climate science, but they have no qualifications to talk about public policy, law, or individual values, rates of time preference, and degrees of risk aversion. In talking about desirable government action, they give the impression that they are either fools or charlatans, but they keep talking―worst of all, talking to doomsday-seeking journalists―nevertheless.
In this connection, we might well bear in mind that the United Nations (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees) is no more a scientifc organization than the U.S. Congress (and its committees and the bureaus it oversees). When decisions and pronouncements come forth from these political organizations, it makes sense to treat them as essentially political in origin and purpose. Politicians aren’t dumb, either―vicious, yes, but not dumb. One thing they know above everything else is how to stampede masses of people into approving or accepting ill-advised government actions that cost the people dearly in both their standard of living and their liberties in the long run.
However, when you look at mainstream news stories regarding global warming, 50% of the stories are anti-global warming. But when you look at peer reviewed scientific journals, 100% of the stories are in favor of global warming. Do you get it? When the article has to stand up to scientific scrutiny and held to the fire by trained scientists, its in favor of the global warming concept.
As far as your "experts" the SSPI lies right off the bat pretending they are non-partisan and unbiased. Despite their funding coming from the oil industry, their founding members are former GOP senators, and their prominent member is Lord Monckton, not a scientist, but a journalist.
Your other examples are a couple meteorologists, a astro physicist and a geologist. There is ONE climatologist. 2500 climatologists contributed to the IPCC, but in your mind, the ONE dissenter is the only one that matters. SO the 2500 who worked on the IPCC are "political whores" but the one you use as he be all and end all of all scientific information, who works for an organization funded by the oil companies and founded by well known republicans is completely unbiased and non-political?
Not to mention, William Kininmonth, the lone climatologist in your list actually believes global warming to be true, but considers man's contribution to be a minority factor.
What I did was, after posting some of the findings of SPPI and having slappy / deerborn attack the SPPI people, I posted a different page from within the same site, which shows the bio's of the staff.
Likewise, if this nation is Christian simply because Christians took the major part in its establishment and signed onto its original charter, then maybe that GM car designed and built by non-Americans must really be non-American, too. No? If it is a Christian thing, and therefore, associated with all things Christian due to that happenstance, i.e. just because Christians did it, then a product of the Chinese must be a completely Chinese thing, too!
(The analogy isn't perfect. I admit it. As a side note, I consider any corporation that moves jobs away from the US to be ECONOMIC TRAITORS to the American people, by removing capital and a necessary tax base from the nation. I would never consider a car with American labels to really be American anymore.)
Like GM and other companies that flaunt their "Americanism" to get you to buy their products, just as the purveyors of the Christian myth, in order to garner for themselves more power and money, have attached themselves, via the new myth, to notions of state and governance. These charlatans want your tithe money and our tax money. Religion is the axe by which these opportunists, corporate and religious, hack away at America for their own profit.
Tell me. Why do ministers seeks wealth and live like CEOs? Well, that's what they are. This is why capitalism and obnoxious greed are defended (lauded) from most pulpits and the Sermon on the Mount is seldom preached.
You may want to claim that our nation was started by various types of Christians, which would be true, but that doesn’t make it an exclusively Christian nation, either in practice or in spirit. It is also ironic that we call ourselves a ‘Christian’ nation, but ‘Christian’ as opposed to what? The other ‘Christian’ nation we rebelled against? How were we any more or less Christian than Great Britain to claim, as British subjects, to be of a better sort of Christianity?
The English were not a godless people. In fact, they abolished slavery decades before we ever began debating the subject and offered much better terms to their colonists than we ever did to America’s blacks, immigrants, and indigenous peoples. If any nation has displayed, in its history, a sense of Christian goodness, albeit paternalistic at times, it would be Great Britain, and not so much the United States!
I would like anyone, Christian or otherwise, to show me where in the Bible, old or New Testament, where it states that representative democracy is the preferred means of governance to God. I would like anyone, Christian or otherwise, to show me where in the Bible that child molestation is forbidden by God. I would like anyone, Christian or otherwise, to show me where in the Bible it permits or advocates any of the Bill of Rights. I already know the answer. They are not there.
You’re harping on and on about Church being synonymous with State is sheer nonsense. Please stop already. You Christians can’t even agree amongst yourselves (and couldn’t back then either) yet, by some leap of blindness on our part, you expect the entire nation to accept your beliefs as ‘supreme’ to this nation’s founders. Wow. That’s real chutzpah.
You know what? When one of your holy prophets can, like Elijah, take one barrel of oil and make it fill the gas tanks of an entire nation, I’ll be converted to your cause. In the meantime, the only miracle I see in Christianity is how many people fall for that bullshit and make important life decisions, even for others, based upon nothing more than superstition.
Anyway, I didn't use the IPCC as a defense of IPCC. So who you calling dumbass? The IPCC is a group of political whores, so I would never defend them. I used the SPPI as a source to debunk global warming. And one of their staff of highly qualified scientists won a Nobel Prize for among other things, identifying a huge mistake in IPCC data that they were using to prove that man-made global warming exists (sic).
Specifically, "His contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate."
Maybe once you sober up you'll get the point.
Enjoy your holiday.
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Ok, it's late and I'm drunk, so my typical cordial style is not applying at this moment.
HEY DUMBASS, you can't use the IPCC AS YOUR DEFENSE OF THE IPCC!!!
I cut and paste your defence in google and it's the SAME GODDAMN SOURCE! That's nonsensical. I hate the constant source indicts on here, but to defend a source indict from the SAME SOURCE is bad debate. I mean, like really bad.
Sorry for the inflammatory rhetoric, but I think that's how you and Dearborn are operating at this time, and I'm pretty sure that you're the guy who talked so much trash about me, but not entirely sure because nobody has the cahones to take a nick on here. Well, except me, shaft, independant voter, (R)eality, sunshineloft (sometimes) and omg.. Dearborn.
Either tone down the BS, or have the ballz to give yourself a name so we know what the excrement on the screen is going to entail.
Endorsed by Catholic Notre Dame professor/Author Mark Noll
Conservative pundit Bill Bennett
and the Rev James Wallis
If you want the reality of how this nation was founded without any political bullshit posturing, this book is HIGHLY recommended.
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Starred Review. Various American evangelicals have claimed the founding fathers as believing and practicing Protestants who intended America to be a Christian nation. Secularists, on the other hand, see in the same historical record evidence that the founders were often Deists at best. Both views are grossly oversimplified, argues Waldman, cofounder and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com. In this engaging, well-researched study, Waldman focuses on the five founding fathers who had the most influence on religion's role in the state—Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams and Madison—and untangles their complex legacy. They were certainly diverse in religiosity, with Jefferson a self-diagnosed heretic, for instance, and Washington a churchgoing Anglican who was silent on points of doctrine and refrained from taking communion. All, however, were committed to the creation of religious freedom in the new nation. Waldman deserves kudos for systematically debunking popular myths: America was not primarily settled by people seeking religious freedom; the separation of church and state did not result from the activism of secularists, but, paradoxically, from the efforts of 18th-century evangelicals; and the American Revolution was as much a reaction against European theocracy as a struggle for economic or political freedom. Waldman produces a thoughtful and remarkably balanced account of religion in early America. (Mar. 18)
America's Constitution and Bill of Rights hold that everyone is free to believe or not in a deity if one so desires. Our Founding Fathers were highly concerned that no 'state' or 'national' religion be adopted - sighting England's secular/religious/political intrigues. I, for one, am forever grateful for their insight.
As a Christian, I expect my government to protect me and maintain a 'level playing field' for all. My family, friends, community, can sort out our secular and religious differences. I am grateful that I live in America where I can be a Christian, my neighbor can be a Muslim, my other neighbor can be a Hindu, and yet another neighbor an avowed atheist.
I cut and paste your defence in google and it's the SAME GODDAMN SOURCE! That's nonsensical. I hate the constant source indicts on here, but to defend a source indict from the SAME SOURCE is bad debate. I mean, like really bad.
Sorry for the inflammatory rhetoric, but I think that's how you and Dearborn are operating at this time, and I'm pretty sure that you're the guy who talked so much trash about me, but not entirely sure because nobody has the cahones to take a nick on here. Well, except me, shaft, independant voter, (R)eality, sunshineloft (sometimes) and omg.. Dearborn.
Either tone down the BS, or have the ballz to give yourself a name so we know what the excrement on the screen is going to entail.
Here's a hint.. whenEVER you hear a candidate say any of those things.. He's lying.
Period.
Obama has shown himself to be a floater, A liar and a flip-flopper. He's an opportunist and he'll do or say anything to get elected. He won the DEM primary by saying a lot of stupid things that you all bought hook, line and stinker.
Then again try explaining the record heat waves, harsher/longer winters, melting icecaps, and increasingly severe weather across the world in a way that doesn't include god punishing homosexuals and without the words global warming.
You can only say coincidence so many times before your mouth goes dry. But hey I bet that flood water will be refreshing. Yummy.