We all remember Secretary of State Colin Powell’s address to the United Nations. To critics of the Bush Administration, this speech is nothing but lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction they said, nor the precusors of such programs. Saddam was defenseless.

Let me briefly revisit one part of Secretary Powell’s speech:

Thanks to intelligence they were provided, the inspectors recently found dramatic confirmation of these reports. When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of documents. You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in U.N. hands. Some of the material is classified and related to Iraq’s nuclear program.

Nuclear program. Remember that? While the Bush Administration may have exaggerated the imminency of the threat of nuclear weapons development - the fact of the matter is Saddam did have the precursors of a nuclear program and was actively working on nuclear weapons. Proof of this fact - today, the United States finally exfiltrated the enriched uranium yellowcake to Canada.

According to the Associated Press reports:

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

550 metric tons. To give readers some ideas of how much weight that is - it is the equivalent of 233 cars.

So while Saddam Hussein may not have had weapons of mass destruction - while Saddam may not have represented an imminent nuclear threat - it wasn’t all wrong… he did have 600 tons of yellowcake. Eventually he would have turned the yellowcake into enriched uranium.

… and given how freaked out the world is over Iran’s pathetic attempts at enrichment, just imagine where we would be if Saddam had gotten to the bomb first.