"So do you often cooperate with the US military," asked the journalist from CNN?...
Well, not really, last time I came across them, a couple of years ago, they threw my sorry ass in a third- world jail. Ok, so I had just tried to liberate a small atoll in the Marshall Islands that they use for testing stars wars missiles.
Nice for a change to be on the same side, sort of. After a long day yesterday and a short night we set of to collect our radioactive cargo from a public space outside the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear complex. 'Return to sender'. I wasn't so sure this morning that we were going to pull it off, Baghdad isn't the easiest place to do things. After a day running around trying to weld shut the 'yellowcake' container, we finally assembled all of the parts only to be shut down by a power cut. But this morning the gods were smiling, as they often do on the day of an action -- more than once we've felt the hand of the angels looking out for us. Power on, game on. The assembled mass began to move.
Now I began to get a little nervous, after all the idea was that as we approached Tuwaitha military check point, I was to get out of the front car, and walk slowly at the front. We've already heard the stories of over-heated soldiers over-reacting -- a long shot but just enough to stay in the back of my mind. No worries really, a nice young man came forward and politely told me to go away, or something to that effect. Sorry, I've got something that belongs inside, I said. Ok wait here I'll go tell the Lt. After an hour or so the Lt came forward. Seemed like a decent guy, after I explained that the container on the truck contained yellowcake and couldn't be returned to the public land it came from, he agreed to arrange for it to be taken into the site. After that I said, "how'd you like to come and see something we couldn't move: a radiation source kicking out 10,000 times background?" "Ok," he said a little nervously.
Sometimes its easy to get into a "them and us" attitude, but not today. He wanted to do the right thing, wanted to take the danger out of the community and so did we.
All we need to do no is convince his superiors at the Pentagon and the White House to stop blocking the IAEA from doing their job.
At one point things took a twist for the unexpected. The army's radiation specialist turned up, with his team to take charge of the situation. They quickly agreed to find a home for the yellowcake deep inside Tuwaitha along-side the many barrels they'd recovered from the local community, but they needed our truck and fork lift to do it. So I had to go with them. Like I said last time I had a US military escort I wasn't so happy with the destination. Hey can I bring a video and camera. No way! Just to film the final resting place, you guys are doing the right thing, why not tell the world. Ok, so long as they don't film the route inside. Sure, no worries. That is how Greenpeace got the first camera crew into Tuwaitha since the military secured it several weeks ago, how we got to witness the new waste stores. They are not so impressive as they sound, but at least the material isn't floating around the local community. Its not a pretty site (if you forgive the pun).
Once in we kept our promise and only switched on the camera when invited. "How about an interview?"
"Ok," said the Lt Col from the army's Centre for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine (yup, surprised me too). He then proceeded to say everything I would have said. Bring in the IAEA and the World Health Organisation and do it now! Yellowcake is dangerous, the kids you saw playing around the mixing container should be found and tested. I do hope he doesn't get into trouble. But I guess he knew what he was doing.
CNN later asked him if he wasn't worried about being caught in a Greenpeace trap.I don't think so .... I think he was glad for the opportunity to make a call for reinforcements, since he only has 8 people, just like us.
Yes, I guess we did spring a trap on them. What were they going to do, tell us to take away the radioactive and toxic yellowcake: "sorry buddy the stores closed." No way, how would that look on the telly. So they were forced to concede to the 'clear and present danger.' They were forced to accept that there are nukes loose in the community not WMD, but deadly contaminants that must be cleaned up. Having opened the gates for what we found, it's time for someone to mount a full investigation. A Greenpeace 'show and tell' won't do it. But hopefully we have shown the way.
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