Proliferation

More evidence that the US invasion of Iraq has not prevented the proliferation of weapons materials:

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.

The equipment -- including high-precision milling and turning machines and electron-beam welders -- and materials -- such as high-strength aluminum -- were tagged by the IAEA years ago, as part of the watchdog agency's shutdown of Iraq's nuclear program. U.N. inspectors then monitored the sites until their evacuation from Iraq just before the war.

The United States barred the inspectors' return after the war, preventing the IAEA from keeping tabs on the equipment and materials up to the present day.

Yes, Saddam Hussein was a threat, in the same sense that several more powerful governments had been threats for decades and a few remain threats today. He was a threat of a sort almost entirely unrelated to modern terrorism. Now his country harbors multiple threats that are directly related to international terrorism -- and whatever weapons he had may now be in the control of the very people we were most worried about in the first place.

I have said it before, and I say it again: proponents of the invasion should hope very, very much that Saddam never had the WMD we thought.

| Posted by Wilson at 21:45 Central | TrackBack
| Report submitted to the Power Desk