AN Iraqi scientist-turned-author says the most significant pieces of his country's dormant nuclear program were buried under a lotus tree in his backyard, untouched for more than a decade before the US-led invasion in 2003.
"Don't sit under the lotus apple tree
With anyone else but me ..." |
But their existence, Mahdi Obeidi writes in a new book, is evidence that the international community should remain vigilant as other countries try to replicate Iraq's successes before the 1991 Gulf war to develop components necessary for a nuclear weapon.
| Holmes! How do you do it? |
In The Bomb in my Garden, Obeidi details fallen Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's furious, and then abandoned, quest for a nuclear bomb. "Although Saddam never had nuclear weapons at his disposal, the story of how close Iraq came to developing them should serve as a red flag to the international community," Obeidi writes with his co-author Kurt Pitzer.
| Perhaps Jonathan should take note, you know, as a Peace Fellow and all. |
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