"The BLU-82 and the MOAB are, in fact, much larger and more powerful weapons even than an FAE. They are based on a mix of ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminium in an aqueous suspension or slurry, with a binding agent to hold the materials together before detonation. The effect of the BLU-82 is astonishing, and rare film shows a detonation, shock wave and subsequent mushroom cloud very similar to a small nuclear weapon, even if it is actually a conventional bomb."
After sending these musings to some friends, and people on my lists, one of them wrote me back saying:
"Hi,
My brother is an ex-Marine (I know - no such thing). He told me months ago (rather casually, I'm afraid) - when we were arguing over the phone about Bush possibly using nukes on Iraq - that these were just low-grade depleted uranium nukes they were talking about using - NOT the mushroom-cloud generating nukes that we traditionally think of when we talk about nukes - e.g., the ones that were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki... Besides, he told me - the US had ALREADY used many of these low-grade depleted uranium nukes in Iraq, during the FIRST Persian Gulf war, back in the early 90's. He seemed to believe that this was common knowledge amongst the military, and most ex-military personnel. He said the only difference between Bush I and Bush II was that Bush II was being straight up front about the use of these weapons."
To which I replied:
"Thank you for sharing with us this insight of a man on the spot. Please thank your brother too. I am quite certain that your brother has had solid information that nuclear weapons were used, especially in the landings on the Kuwaiti shore. However, I believe your brother was referring to a LOW-YIELD Nuclear Weapon, rather than a LOW-GRADE weapon? It is almost impossible to get a fission reaction going with U-238 except under immense neutron flux, it being, under normal conditions, a FISSIONABLE material, but NOT a FISSILE material, the latter class being capable of spontaneous fission under certain quantitative and kinetic material density increases and other considerations, as is possible with the traditional U-235 and Plutonium-239. However, U-238 or so-called "Depleted Uranium", i.e., U-238 fairly leached of its fissile U-235 content, IS fissionable under heavy neutron flux, which jumps it up into Plutonium 239 when it is deliberately used for the casing on the FUSION aggregate of a thermonulear weapon (Hydrogen Bomb)."
"What I believe your brother meant, are LOW-YIELD nuclear weapons, i.e., of (relatively) low energy output, (between a few tons' and a few hundred tons' TNT-equivalent) which, due to clever design, such as the use of Red Mercury or Mercuric-Stibic Heptoxide (Hg2Sb2O7) as carrier and tamper for Pu-239 incorporated into its crystalline structure, combined with electromagnetic implosion using heavy fields generated by FCGs (Flux-Compression (explosive) Generators), can make even relatively miniscule amounts of Pu-239 fission, and are also much more efficient in the percentage of fissile material they manage to fission when they are initiated, so fallout is low, and the "Neutron Bomb" which is something like a very small nuke, produces a high-density neutron flux which can penetrate armor and also underground facilities and killed, most likely, the Iraqi soldiers in their dugouts in Kuwait, before they were bulldozed over."