In case you weren’t having trouble sleeping before, consider that nuclear materials have gone missing in Iraq.
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.
While some military goods that disappeared from Iraq after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, including missile engines, later turned up in scrap yards in the Middle East and Europe, none of the equipment or material known to the IAEA as potentially useful in making nuclear bombs has turned up yet, ElBaradei said.
So, where’d the materials go? Are they missing? Were they stolen?
“We simply don’t know, although we are trying to get the information,” said one council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials had no immediate comment on the report.
Anyone who believes the Bush administration is making us safer just isn’t paying attention. As my friend Fitz, who alerted me to this story, said, “I would have thought that someone, somewhere, would have realized that leaving this unaddressed makes C-minus Augustus open to the same mushroom cloud fears he used to go to war in the first place…”