Translation of latest Niger yellowcake forgeries investigative article

from La Repubblica can be found here.

Americans tend to think of Italy as being a not very serious country, with governments rising and falling constantly over seemingly petty comic opera disputes. Yet, Italy's history since the mob-assisted American invasion of Sicily in 1943 has had a lurid subterranean element involving the Mafia, a rogue Masonic lodge preparing an alternative post-coup government, the Pope's banker, the corruption of almost the entire power elite, the CIA, American funding of Italian election campaigns, and Michael Ledeen.

It doesn't take much to get Italians to conspire, but America bears some of the responsibility, since in the higher cause of fighting first Fascism, then Communism, we subsidized a fair amount of the underground activity over the years. Once again in the yellowcake fiasco, we appear to have brought out the traditional flaws in the Italian character.

On a related matter, Richard Sale of UPI writes:

A former senior State Department official told this reporter: "If Iraq had had the yellow cake in question, it would not have advanced its ability to develop a nuclear weapon because Iraq lacked the complex industrial capacity required to refine yellow cake into anything usable in that respect. In fact, in 1991 Iraq already had several hundred tons of yellow cake purchased in two deals with Niger in the early 1980's that were deemed of so little value by the IAEA that they were never removed as part of the UNSCOM disarmament effort because it was of so little significance. In fact, in the weeks after the fall of Baghdad, looters removed some of the yellow cake from its sealed drums to use the drums as containers for other materials. All along, since early 2003, I've wondered why virtually no-one said `so what?'" in reaction to the nuclear aspect of this entire affair."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer