OH, MORE INCONVENIENCE – AT 9:19 A.M. ET:  Iraq?  Iraq?  Didn't Barack (come to save us) brilliantly execute our withdrawal from Iraq, invaded by BUSH (!!) and CHENEY (!!!!!!)?  Why, these newspapers must be run by the Republican National Committee.  Everyone knows that London's Daily Mail is run out of Milwaukee: 

Militants in Iraq have seized nuclear materials used for scientific research at a university, the United Nations has been warned.

Iraq warned of the seizure in a letter on Wednesday to the U.N. in which it appealed for help to 'stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad.'

In the letter, which has been obtained by Reuters, Iraq's U.N. ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim said nearly 40kg of uranium compounds were kept at Mosul University.

The city of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, was captured last month in a seizure led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

The U.N. atomic agency has today said it believed the nuclear material was 'low grade' and did not pose a significant security risk.

'Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state,' Alhakim told U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, adding that such materials 'can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.'

'These nuclear materials, despite the limited amounts mentioned, can enable terrorist groups, with the availability of the required expertise, to use it separate or in combination with other materials in its terrorist acts,' said Alhakim.

He warned that they could also be smuggled out of Iraq.

COMMENT:  The UN is playing down the danger, and, as one would expect, so is the Obama administration.  But nuclear materials can conceivably be used to make "dirty" bombs, which spread radiation.  I don't know if these materials qualify.  But the theft of any nuclear material indicates that Islamist extremists want that material.  Why would they want it?  I doubt if they want it to make their watch dials glow in the dark. 

Nothing to see here, folks, nothing to see.

July 10, 2014