June 24, 2003
"Substantially accounted for?" What's this, then?
We all got up at 5 am this morning, nervous because we had big plans for today. We're going back to the canister of yellowcake we found on the open ground in a busy junction next to a village, and put it back where it belongs. It's the size of a small car. Some folks might think nothing works in Baghdad, and sometimes that's true. But when the local community know that you're going to take away a huge lump of radioactivity from outside their front door, you'd be amazed what can happen.
This morning we had welders. We had lorry drivers. We even managed to magic up a fork-lift truck. We sealed up that cannister and its filthy contents, put it on the truck, and we drove straight through the gates of the Tuwaitha nuclear complex. Right now, I'm standing at the first military checkpoint, and when they clapped eyes on our convoy of vehicles with yellow flags and "Greenpeace" spattered across them, a huge cannister on a flatbed truck with radiation symbols across it, and a large number of press (ha ha ha), the first thing the US Marine said was not "of course we'll take it back it's our responsibility," it was a shout to his comrades: "there's a whole bunch of motherfuckers heading straight for us." Got that right, mate.
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