A Breathtaking Work of Staggering Incompetence

This boggles the mind:

Equipment which could be used in an illicit nuclear bomb program has disappeared from previously monitored sites in Iraq, and radioactively contaminated items from there have been found abroad, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has told the UN.

Installations in former Iraqi president’s Saddam Hussein’s nuclear bomb program were being systematically dismantled, its director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, has told the Security Council, warning of the implications for trafficking.

In a letter to Sir Emyr Jones Parry, the British diplomat presid-ing over the security council, ElBaradei said his inspectors had “been able to identify quantities of industrial items, some radioactively contaminated, that had been transferred out of Iraq from sites [previously] monitored by the IAEA.”

Before the US invasion, Iraq’s nuclear-related equipment was tagged, guarded, and closely monitored by the IAEA. After the invasion, unbelievably, it was left unguarded and unmonitored, and now seems to have been systematically stolen. The equipment is most likely now in the international black market, or in the hands of Iran or non-state terrorist organizations.

What exactly was the rationale for war again? Wasn’t it something about keeping WMDs out of the hands of terrorists? I am truly, utterly flabbergasted that this was been allowed.

Kash