Iraqi access to uranium ore -- an interesting footnote

The continued attention to Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame and Iraq's alleged interest in Niger's yellowcake uranium ore led me to look for a source that would have something useful to say about the likelihood that Iraqis could have gotten uranium another way -- simply by mining it domestically.

For this purpose the U.S. Geological Service's Minerals Yearbook seemed like a good place to start. All of the issues from 1994 onwards are on the web (click the headline above to go to the right page). Reading them, especially when armed with software (Acrobat Reader) that permits rapid searches for terms like "uranium," revealed some interesting material and raised some new questions.




In the first yearbook available (1994), we find

A uranium mine was reported northeast of Mosul, but no other details were available. Uranium also was recovered from phosphate rock during processing at a fertilizer complex in the west at Al Qaim, but no quantitative data were available.

The table of Iraqi mineral output statistics for that year that is included in the Yearbook has a footnote about uranium (and fluorine) compounds being mined or extracted from phophate ore, but notes that output levels are impossible to estimate.

The 1995 Yearbook contains the same text and footnote in the output table. In 1996 the text disappears, but the footnote is continued. This pattern holds in the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Yearbooks. The 2000 Yearbook contains new text:

Uranium was reportedly recovered in the past from the Akashat phosphate operation (Federation of American Scientists, October 9, 2000, Akashat/Ukashat, accessed June 20, 2001 at URL http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/akashat.htm).

In 2001 the word uranium is not mentioned in the Iraq section. It is not mentioned in 2002 either. The only mention of uranium in the 2003 report was in connection with the “attempt” (whether successful or not the report does not say) to ban the import of ferrous military scrap metal from Iraq in that year. Uranium is not mentioned in the 2004 report.

It is certainly relevant to assessing the plausibility of claims that the Iraqis sought uranium ore from Niger to know that they had at least some commerically recoverable deposits on their own soil. It would also be good to know why the Yearbooks' discussion of Iraq exhibits this odd pattern of disclosure and non-disclosure.

"We're USA today with spies"

Last Friday the Raleigh News & Observer ran my column on Ron Johnston's study of the work life of U.S. intelligence analysts (click the title above to link to it). Titled Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community, and published by the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence, the study makes for fascinating if rather depressing reading. Today's title is a quotation from one analyst interviewed by Johnston. The gist of the story is that analysts are often no longer doing my analyzing. Instead, they are being turned into reporters, and the emphasis in their reporting is on the short-run and the tactical (or even the operational), to the detriment of long-run and the large-scale.

Admittedly, mentioning this on a day which sees Yahoo (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051107/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqintelligence) reporting that "U.S. Iraq intel 'intentionally misleading'" (about a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of an al Quaeda defector who supplied information on a Saddam-al Qaeda connection concluding that it was probably deliberate misinformation, but the Bush administration ignoring their conclusion),the fact that analysts no longer get to write longer, more reflective pieces, or that nobody reads them anyway might seem to be small potatoes. Granted, it is not by itself criminal, but it speaks to a pervasive malfunctioning of the national security "management information system" which may ultimately be a larger problem because it is not linked to criminality or the knavery of specific elected or appointed officials but to a larger more systemic problem.

Quoting from my own concluding paragraphs:

To its credit, the report presents some good ideas for addressing the problems on the supply side -- through strengthening what the report terms the "infrastructure" of research and analysis, making the evaluation of analysis much more systematic and institutionalizing a process of learning from mistakes.

Unfortunately, the intelligence agencies can do little about the demand side. They are in no position to teach their consumers that they should be asking for a different kind of intelligence product. That will only come about when voters elect leaders who have an interest in analysis that goes beyond short-term tactical considerations, and who are willing to listen to points of view that they might not like to hear.

The coming fracas over emigration?

On the new books shelf of our university library I found last week David Heenan's Flight Capital: The Alarming Exodus of America's Best and Brightest (Mountain View, CA: Davis-Black Publishing). Davis-Black Publishing is listed as a division of CPP, Inc., also of Mountain View. The Silicon Valley location is perhaps suggestive of their primary client base. CPP's website reveals that they sell

some of the world's leading assessments--including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) and Strong Interest Inventory® instruments-- and support materials. Trainers, consultants, HR professionals, executive coaches, and psychologists use CPP products and services to help their clients take the guesswork out of personal and professional growth.

Heenan begins his argument by noting the importance of skilled immigrants to US scientific, technological, and economic success:

Chinese and Indian immigrants run nearly a quarter of Silicon Valley's high-tech firms. Half of the Americans who shared Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry in the past seven years were born elsewhere. Nearly 40 [percent of MIT graduate students are from abroad. More than half of all Ph. D.s working here are foreign-born, as are 45 percent of physicists, computer scientists, and mathematicians. One third of all physics teachers and one fourth of all women docytors immigrated to this country.

He then argues that in the 1990s the improvement of conditions in these immigrants' native countries began to induce large numbers of them to return home. "In a world economy that placed an increasing premium on knowledge, many of America's best and brightest began hotfooting it home in search of another promised land."

The heart of the book is a series of case studies of countries benefiting from this pattern: Ireland, Iceland, India, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Israel, and Mexico. What seems common to all the cases is a government that has a keen appreciation of its position in the international division of labor, a willingness to invest in preparing for the future, and a business-state relationship that is symbiotic rather than parasitic.

His conclusion chapter has the predictable case against outsourcing, but also suggests a less obvious series of innovations that are supposedly tailored to exploit the current situation: improve immigration policies to remove barriers to skilled workers; change the constitution to allow immigrants to become president after a suitable residence period (the Schwarzenegger amendment?); work to attract highly skilled immigrants and (by implication) de-emphasize the re-uniting of families in US immigration policy; learn to live with those who have dual loyalties; get serious about improving American K-12 and higher education; elevate the social status of science and technology ("Nurture the Nerds!"); broaden workforce participation and defer retirement, and revive and treasure the concept of national service.

Although these suggestions have an off-the-cuff quality, they are a useful place to begin a discussion rather than the conclusion of one. They certainly are a more attractive set of ideas than the simple injunction to accept the "inevitability" of globalization and the equally inevitable slide in American living standards.

George W. Bush and the "Red versus Expert" struggle

After reading a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers for a U.S. Supreme Court seat that suggested that this is simply "cronyism," I was reminded of similar stories that had been published recently about other Bush appointees that suggested much the same thing was going on in agencies such as FEMA and the State Department. (The WSJ story is behind a subscription wall, but a friend was kind enough to have a copy emailed to me). It is available on-line at

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB112838640165859103-lMyQjAxMDE1MjA4NDMwODQ2Wj.html

and in hard copy form in the 4 October 2005 issue, p. A26. Written by Randy Barnett, it contends that "[c]ronyism is bad not only because it leads to less qualified judges, but also because we want a judiciary with independence from the executive branch. A longtime friend of the president who has served as his close personal and political adviser and confidante, no matter how fine a lawyer, can hardly be expected to be sufficiently independent -- especially during the remaining term of her former boss."

The "we" in the previous paragraph is merely rhetorical. Leaders who have a very expansive and ideologically driven view of the necessity for sharp transformative actions tend not to be very concerned about the loyalty of appointees to anyone other than themselves. This means they place an extremely high premium on the political trustworthiness of appointees, often at the expense of other desirable qualities (such as knowing something about how to perform the job they are asked to do). Mao Tse-tung, who had such an ideologically driven view, favored the appointment of those who were "red" -- that is, completely committed to the party line -- rather than "expert" -- possessed the technical qualifications to perform the job. Of course, finding cadres who were both red and expert was the ideal solution to this, but in Mao's China as in Washington, D.C. this is not easy to do.

I won't bother to comment on the FEMA situation because that has already been beaten to death in conventional media as well as in the blogs. More relevant is recent coverage of the first Middle East visit of the State department's new head of public diplomacy -- Bush confidant Karen Hughes. As reported by John Brown of the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy (click the above title to link to it), both foreign and domestic coverage of her trip has been scathing. In Friday's Washington Post Al Kamen presented a sample of opinion from highly visible sources:

"Preachy, culturally insensitive, superficial PR blitz." -- USA Today.

"Faux Pas Trifecta; saying too much, saying the wrong thing, saying anything at all." -- the Washington Times op-ed page.

"Non-answers, canned message, macabre." -- the Los Angeles Times.

"Fiasco, lame attempt at bonding." -- Slate.com

"Painfully clueless . . . pedestrian . . . vapid . . . gushy." -- Arab News ("The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily")

"The marquee clown [in] America's circus diplomacy . . . total ineptitude . . . total disconnect." Al-Jazeerah.

Although Kamen characterizes these acounts as "harsh," his own view is, if anything, even more negative:

En route home, Hughes singled out to reporters "a really interesting meeting" with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul , who urged her to try to look at the Iraq war from the perspective of "a common man in Turkey."

"And he said: 'You know, for you all, when you're talking about Iraq, war in Iraq, and Iran and Syria, you're talking about countries over there. We're talking about our next-door neighbors,' " Hughes recalled, according to a transcript on the State Department Web site.

"And it's an interesting perspective and an important perspective that I will now try to bring to our policy debate," she said. "Not that it hasn't been present, but I consider it my job to make sure that it's really highlighted and considered."

Carrying a map of the region also might come in handy.

Hughes also defended President Bush . "I had one person at one lunch raise the issue of the president mentioning God in his speeches," she told reporters. "And I asked whether he was aware that previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our Constitution cites 'one nation under God.' "

Carrying a copy of the Constitution -- maybe also the Pledge of Allegiance -- might come in handy.

Kamen's story is available at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/06/AR2005100601803.html

Throughout the Bush presidency, observers have been divided in their characterization of how ideologically driven Bush is. His pattern of appointments is consistent with the nonideological "crony" theory, but also with Bush-as-Maoist. Without knowing the private evaluations of candidates and the administration's grounds for selecting and rejecting them, it is impossible to know which theory is correct.

Why they're not rushing to build new refineries

Exxon/Mobil now forecasts non-OPEC oil production will peak in five years
See the discussion at the above link.

Who Covered the 82nd Airborne story, and how?

This morning the Raleigh News & Observer carried a front page (below the fold) story, "Bragg unit subject of abuse tip," written by staff writer Jim Nesbit. It begins, "Army criminal investigators are probing an officer's allegations that 82nd Airborne Division soldiers abused and beat detainees at a base near Fallajah in 2003 and 2004, a Senate Armed Services Committee spokesman said Friday."

After reading this hard copy version, I checked the NY Times online and found the following:

"3 in 82nd Airborne Say Beating Iraqi Prisoners Was Routine," by Eric Schmitt

"WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 - Three former members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division say soldiers in their battalion in Iraq routinely beat and abused prisoners in 2003 and 2004 to help gather intelligence on the insurgency and to amuse themselves."

The difference between a single officer's "allegations" and what three soldiers "say" made me curious to see how other papers introduced this story. I then checked the online Washington Post and found:

"82nd Airborne Soldiers Allege Iraq Abuse,by Lolita C. Baldor
The Associated Press
Saturday, September 24, 2005; 8:39 AM
NEW YORK -- Soldiers in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division vented their frustration by systematically torturing Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals, a U.S. rights group alleges in a new report.
The Human Rights Watch report, issued Friday, was compiled from interviews with a captain and two sergeants who served in a battalion of the 82nd Airborne that was stationed at a military base called Mercury near Fallujah, the insurgent stronghold retaken by U.S. forces last year."

The L.A. Times had

"More Iraqis Tortured, Officer Says --
• The 82nd Airborne is accused of abuses in 2003 and early 2004. A criminal inquiry begins.

By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — An Army captain and two sergeants from the 82nd Airborne Division who were responsible for supervising prisoners in Iraq have come forward with allegations that members of the unit routinely beat, tortured and abused detainees in 2003 and early 2004.
The Pentagon announced Friday that it opened a criminal investigation of the accusations this week, after learning of the charges recently from the Senate Armed Services Committee and Human Rights Watch."

Serrano's story was the only one to mention in the lead that the soldiers were responsible for supervising prisoners.

I then decided to check other newspapers' websites to see how they covered the story. This is what I found:

Dallas Morning News -- no coverage

Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- no coverage

Cincinnati Enquirer -- no coverage

Philadelphia Inquirer -- no coverage

Chicago Tribune -- "82nd Airborne Soldiers Allege Iraq Abuse
September 24, 2005
By Lolita C. Baldor/Associated Press Writer
Soldiers in the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division vented their frustration by systematically torturing Iraqi detainees from 2003 into 2004, hitting them with baseball bats and dousing them with chemicals, a U.S. rights group alleges in a new report."

Chicago Sun-Times -- no coverage

Detroit News -- no coverage

Cleveland Plain Dealer -- "Army probes new report of prisoner abuse in Iraq,
Lolita C. Baldor Associated Press
Washington - The Army has opened an investigation into a Fort Bragg soldier's allegations that he witnessed and heard about widespread prisoner abuse - including torture and a beating with a baseball bat - while serving at a base in Iraq."

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- "New charges of abuse in Iraq probed
Army told prisoner torture widespread, condoned by superiors; congressional investigation sought Saturday, September 24, 2005
By Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- The Army has opened an investigation into a Fort Bragg soldier's allegations that he witnessed and heard about widespread prisoner abuse -- including torture and a beating with a baseball bat -- while serving at a base in Iraq."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- Soldiers' report details prisoner abuse, torture in Iraq
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 09/24/2005 WASHINGTON The Army has opened an investigation into a Fort Bragg soldier's allegations that he witnessed and heard about widespread prisoner abuse - including torture and a beating with a baseball bat - while serving at a base in Iraq."

Minneapolis Star-Tribune -- no coverage

Denver Post -- no coverage

Seattle Post - Intelligencer -- no coverage

and finally, elsewhere in North Carolina

Durham Herald-Sun -- no coverage and

Fayetteville Observer -- no coverage

I'm sure I left out some papers that others would include. My survey method was simply to visit the paper's website, look for the story on the home page, then go to the "national/world" section. If not there, I would then look for a search box and search under "airborne" or "82nd airborne."

A bumper sticker currently in circulation says, "If you're not outraged,you're not paying attention." My survey suggests another reason: Maybe your local news outlet does not give any bad news to pay attention to.

Does trade follow the flag? Consumer product boycotts and national policies

The extent to which international trade is affected by political considerations has long been a concern of economists and political scientists. A recent study by polling firm GMI suggests a new wrinkle on this old topic. GMI surveyed 15,500 consumers in 17 countries to learn how politics asffected their purchases.

Overall, 36% of all consumers worldwide –- and a higher percentage of men than women – said they were boycotting products. The most boycotted brands ... were Nike, Coca Cola, McDonald’s and Nestle. The Germans had the highest number of brands on their black lists including local ones such as Adidas, Opel and Mercedes, while Chinese consumers said they avoided mainly local brands and Sony.

"These findings will be very concerning to these adept marketing companies, as it demonstrates the risk to the value of their brands. Clearly they are not connecting with their local marketplaces as well as they could," said Allyson Stewart-Allen, Director of marketing consulting firm International Marketing Partners.

"This is why we are currently developing a Brand Barometer together with GMI to allow companies to monitor on a regular basis how they are perceived around the world. They can then act on the insights about their brand perceptions and implement more focused local marketing programs."

Among the most frequently given reasons for boycotting were unfair labour practices and unhealthy products. Bad publicity and country origination played a less important role. However, 18% of those asked also said they wouldn’t buy products produced by countries that don’t respect the Kyoto agreement aimed at slowing down global warming, while 28% weren't aware of the agreement at all.

A fourth of all consumers worldwide claimed they were 'environmentally responsible' or 'socially responsible' rather than average shoppers

GMI has also conducted international polls that attempt to evaluate the appeal of nations as "brands." The questions tap attitudes of respondents on six dimensions of attitude towards a sample of twenty-five nations: people, investment & immigration, exports, tourism, governance, and culture & heritage. Overall, the U.S. places 11th. It scored well on exports, investment & immigration, slightly less well on tourism and people, below average on governance, and well below average on culture & heritage. The study author observes that

One could argue that a degree of unpopularity is the unavoidable price of being the world's only military superpower. However, the culture score is associated with the maturity, prudence, wisdom, cultivation, humanity and intelligence of the nation. Such a low score for Brand America hardly provides a positive context in which to evaluate America's political and military acts.

The complete text of the report can be found here:
http://www.gmi-mr.com/gmipoll/docs/NBI_Q2_2005.pdf

Only two such studies have been released, and there is some instability in the rankings. It will be interesting to see how durable these findings are after several more such surveys are completed.