Don't Eat The Yellowcake
The WMDs might have never turned up, but the US has just completed a mission to ship 550 tonnes of Yellowcake concentrated Uranium out of Iraq for re-processing in Canada. The Canadians will be reprocessing it into nuclear fuel, but the possibility was always there for the material to head in a more sinister direction. The Tuwaitha facility where it was shipped from was one of the hubs of the old regime's nuclear ambition, resulting in an Israeli bombing raid in 1981.
Shipping the Yellowcake out by sea was looking risky - either trekking it through the less stable south, or risking an excursion out through the Hormuz Strait and risking a run-in with the Iranians - so it was eventually shipped out in a monster airlift to Diego Garcia.
24th Jul 2008 - Tumblr