ATRIOS

Every day, after reading my e-mail and my local paper, I go read Atrios' blog. He invariably has several posts I'm interested in but what I most enjoy are his commenters. In addition to their humor being a welcome relief from the lies, mistakes and disasters of the Bush regime, they are also another source of information. Below is a pic of cascaded centrifuges, the sort that Saddam was supposed to have wanted to build with the now infamous aluminum tubes.

From Commenter Apikoros at Atrios' place. Original source here.



By my count, there are 84 centrifuges in this picture. How many would Saddam have needed?

All agencies agree that about 25,000 centrifuges based on tubes of the size Iraq is trying to acquire would be capable of producing approximately two weapons' worth of highly enriched uranium per year. LINK

C ommenter NTODD points out that even the most Bush-friendly poll, Rasmussen, now has Fredo at 40%, a new low for Rasmussen. Commenter JAWBONE links to a BBC article pointing out the regime hype surrounding "Operation Swarm." For a bit of relief, we also get a kitty pic from JEFFRAHAM PRESTONIAN.

Commenter DAVE™© provides this devastating exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Larry Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department:

BLITZER:... Did the Bush administration deliberately mislead the American public on WMD?

WILKERSON: Wolf, there's no question in my mind now after looking back at is as an academic, doing research over this last year or two, and my time in the State Department, there's no doubt in my mind that certain members of the Bush administration did in fact politicize the intelligence, did cherry-pick the intelligence..

BLITZER: Who?

WILKERSON: I would put at the top of that list Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, in the Pentagon, who was more or less the planner, if you will, if you can use that term, for post- invasion Iraq.

BLITZER: And so what about Rumsfeld, who was his boss, Wolfowitz, who was his boss? What about them?

WILKERSON: Paul Wolfowitz as deputy secretary of defense probably -- probably did not do all that he could to make sure that the intelligence picture was as the intelligence community was rendering it. I'm not sure about Secretary Rumsfeld. I think Secretary Rumsfeld's major concern was with transformation of the armed forces. I don't think he was focused as much on war with Iraq as was the vice president's office and certain members of his own Pentagon. Did Secretary Rumsfeld politicize the intelligence? Did he cherry pick from the intelligence? If his policy planning shopper, his policy shop in Douglas Feith's realm was cherry picking the intelligence and providing talking points for the secretary to speak, then the secretary of defense was also cherry picking.

Commenter ERIC provides a link to an October 2004 NY Times article that is critical of the aluminum tubes story.