The power of nuclear things

G Hecht - Technology and Culture, 2010 - JSTOR
Technology and Culture, 2010JSTOR
On 28 January 2003, US President George W. Bush declared in his St the Union address
that" the British government has learned that Sa Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa clear implication: Iraq was building nuclear weapons. The
scenario wa implausible. After all, weapons inspectors had uncovered a clandestine gram
there back in 1991. Surely it would try again? Bush and his adv had been implying as much
for months, most notably when national rity advisor Condoleezza Rice warned on national …
On 28 January 2003, US President George W. Bush declared in his St the Union address that" the British government has learned that Sa Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa clear implication: Iraq was building nuclear weapons. The scenario wa implausible. After all, weapons inspectors had uncovered a clandestine gram there back in 1991. Surely it would try again? Bush and his adv had been implying as much for months, most notably when national rity advisor Condoleezza Rice warned on national television that" we want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." 1 The evidence Rice in invoked-that Iraq had imported aluminum tubes whose only plausibl was in" nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs"--had gained modest traction in the media; behind the scenes, many intelligence of disputed its validity. 2 Recent international inspections of Iraqi facilitie n't turned up any evidence of weapons programs. The case for war w going well. In this context," uranium from Africa" seemed promising. It tainly sounded much scarier than" aluminum tubes." It could be fleshe into 500 tons of" yellowcake from Niger." Displacing the source of inf
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