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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (71599)	2/5/2003 9:32:24 PM
From: FaultLine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

Hello JohnM; Apparently, the use of the tubes is widely debated; it is possible they are for nuclear use; it is possible they are not; and it is possible they are dual use. I thought it weakened the stronger parts of his argument to make this one of the multiple legs. Perhaps not: POWELL: Let me tell you what is not controversial about these tubes. First, all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use. Second, Iraq had no business buying them for any purpose. They are banned for Iraq. --fl

To: JohnM who wrote (71599)	2/6/2003 10:48:25 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I am puzzled by your reluctance to accept technical evidence. The aluminum tubes that Saddam was found to have attempted to smuggle into Iraq--they are banned by the UN, so he was ilegally smuggling them--were manufactured to specifications which far exceeded the ones in effect for conventional weapons, mostly rockets, which the US requires for its own conventional weaponry. Unless you believe that Saddam's conventional weapons are more sophisticated than ours--an opinion which requires passage directly through the looking glass into the Twilight Zone--then you have to admit that the tubes were going to be used for nefarious purposes. The only half-way decent counter-argument is that that Powell was lying about the tubes.