The bomb in my garden
Praise for The Bomb in My Garden "This one book will tell you more about Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction than all U.S. intelligence on the subject. It is a fascinating and rare glimpse inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq--and inside a tyrant's mind." --Fareed Zakaria author of The Future of Freedom "The Bomb in My Garden is important and utterly gripping. The old cliche is true--you start reading, and you don't want to stop. Mahdi Obeidi's story makes clear how hard Saddam Hussein tried to develop a nuclear weapon, and the reasons he fell short. It is also unforgettable as a picture of how honorable people tried to cope with a despot's demands. I enthusiastically recommend this book." --James Fallows National Correspondent, The Atlantic Monthly "Obeidi was the key scientist in Saddam's centrifuge program, and he was central when they tried to conceal it. He was already tho...
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What Hacker News says
- i recently read "the bomb in my garden" by mahdi obeidi (sic) who was the head of the iraqi uranium enrichment effort under Saddam Hussein. they started out with nothing and had to do everything from scratch. they were able to spin their centrifuge up to 20k rpm or something like that before it flew apart. you need 50k to enrich uranium. spinning a tube at that speed requires sophisticated machinery and knowledge that can only be gained after decades of hard work. but Saddam insisted that enriched uranium be produced in only a few years in light of the situation with iran. and when he insisted something be done, people would do it or else be killed. and so this required the enrichment engineers to seek equipment and knowledge from more advanced states. its amazing how casual the process of getting these things was for them. at one point they gathered data from a book in the stacks of a college library, a book that was not meant to be lent out to anyone who wasnt willing to provide ID, by simply asking the librarian if she could hand over the book really quick just to be sure its the right book. a lot of the things that stand in the way of people trying to do these things arent super specific but are just things like having the ability to machine metal within a certain tolerance or produce bearings that are within a certain spec. but they they did get their hands on some very important design documents that allowed them to succeed in producing enriched uranium in a very short period of time. its a fantastic book.
- Surprised to see “A pattern language” on there. I’ve read most of it in preparation for building my house. It’s more of a dictionary than a book but it’s unbelievably useful. It’s just a huge list of little things that an architect would notice over the span of his career. Little things that are important but not obvious. If you’re building a house, another really good book is “what not to build.”
I also recommend “Islamic imperialism” from Yale, “the bomb in my garden” by mahdi obeidi and “nothing to envy.”
- Read “The Bomb in my Garden” by Obeidi. As I recollect, he buried the plans for a centrifuge and some key parts.
- There's a book called "The Bomb in My Garden", about the man responsible for Iraq's nuclear weapons program in the 90's, which get pretty in depth to the length he had to go to in order to get "not very close".
It gets into a lot more detail than this article, so if you're interested I'd recommend checking it out: http://www.amazon.com/Bomb-My-Garden-Secrets-Mastermind/dp/0...
