WTF?

This is absolutely incredible:

A specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched after a month of official indecision to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, today found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing.

The discovery at the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility was the second since the end of the war in which a known nuclear cache was plundered extensively enough that authorities could not rule out the possibility that deadly materials had been stolen.

It was no secret that Iraq had nuclear materials, and with all the talk about terrorists with dirty bombs, a lot of military and intelligence resources should have gone toward securing these sites as soon as possible. We had Special Forces operating in Iraq even before the war "officially" begun, so maybe we should have had a few keep watch on the radioactives. Why the war planners ignored this threat, I can't say, but it smacks of incompetence of the worst kind.

One more thing: the irony, the irony…

First Time for Everything

I don't think I've ever referenced here anything William Saletan has written. I'm not really sure why, but I should do a little research. I say this because his latest piece on Slate quickly and clearly debunks the two central claims made by Bush in his May 1 "victory speech": 1) we fought the war because Iraq had banned weapons; and 2) we fought the war because Iraq had links to al-Qaida. My favorite bit:

What does Bush have to say about the absence of evidence on these two points? "This much is certain," he observed in his victory address. "No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more."

Well, that's true. No terrorist network will get weapons from Pat Moynihan, either. That doesn't make his death essential to the war on terror.

Be sure to read the whole piece. There are some good supporting links there.