IRAQ NUKE GEAR VANISHED

What the hell is this?

Equipment and mate­ri­als that could be used to make nuclear weapons are dis­ap­pear­ing from Iraq but nei­ther Baghdad nor Washington appears to have noticed, the U.N. nuclear watch­dog agency reported on Monday.
Satellite imagery shows that entire build­ings in Iraq have been dis­man­tled. They once housed high-​​precision equip­ment that could help a gov­ern­ment or ter­ror group make nuclear bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to the U.N. Security Council.
Equipment and mate­ri­als help­ful in mak­ing bombs also have been removed from open stor­age areas in Iraq and dis­ap­peared with­out a trace, accord­ing to the satel­lite pic­tures, IAEA Director-​​General Mohamed ElBaradei said. 

THERE’S MORE: This guns-​​for-​​money pro­gram seems like a most excel­lent turn of events. But with the prices the U.S. mil­i­tary is pay­ing Al-Sadr’s gang — $250 for a mor­tar, $170 for a grenade launcher and, for a bul­let, 25 cents,” accord­ing to the New York Times, I can’t help but won­der: is this a sur­ren­der by the Sadrists, or a fundraiser?
AND MORE: “The cash-​​for-​​guns ini­tia­tive is a good idea,” Phil Carter says. “If we can at least get rid of some heavy weapons and explo­sives, it’s always worth it, even if they keep the light stuff.“
AND MORE: Blame President Bush for the miss­ing gear, says Matt Yglesias.

Before the war, Iraq’s nuclear pro­gram was years away from bear­ing a usable weapon and, thanks to the sanc­tions regime, get­ting fur­ther away. Then, thanks to diplo­macy and threats of force, IAEA inspec­tors returned to the coun­try. These inspec­tors informed the U.S. gov­ern­ment that its pre-​​war assess­ments of Iraq’s nuclear pro­gram were off-​​base and that the threat was nowhere near as immi­nent as the admin­is­tra­tion had main­tained. Nevertheless, the United States invaded, thus pre­cip­i­tat­ing the evac­u­a­tion of IAEA inspec­tors who’d been safe­guard­ing the most advanced ele­ments of the Iraqi nuclear pro­gram. After the war, the admin­is­tra­tion failed to pro­vide enough man­power to secure the sites and, dis­play­ing its typ­i­cal dis­dain for inter­na­tional insti­tu­tions, wouldn’t let the inspec­tors come back.
As a result, instead of being under lock-​​and-​​key, bits and pieces of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear pro­gram are now off God knows where. 

October 12th, 2004 | Nukes | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.