Sept. 9, 2005 – As the United States massed forces around Iraq in preparation for an invasion that the Bush administration told the world was necessary to rid the nation of alleged weapons of mass destruction, the planners of the impending war did little to arrange for securing and removing radioactive materials known to exist, according to a government report released yesterday.
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- U.S. Sneaks Uranium Out of Iraq; UN Team Returns with Limited Mandate (Jul 26, 2004)
- ‘Terrorists’ May Yet Obtain WMDs in Iraq, Reports Imply (Oct 12, 2004)
- Iraqi explosives slipped thru U.S. fingers after war, inspectors say (Oct 26, 2004)
- Missing Explosives Problem Goes Far Beyond Al-Qaqaa (Nov 1, 2004)
Despite alleging that Iraq continued to build biological and nuclear weapons, and despite knowing the location and amount of materials previously tagged by the United Nations, the US Department of Defense "was not ready to collect and secure radiological sources when the war began in March 2003 and for about 6 months thereafter," according to the report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
These materials, though not of weapons grade, could be used to make so-called "dirty bombs," a potential weapon the Bush administration and others have cited as a serious concern.
The report said the administration’s failure is at least partly responsible for allowing insurgents and others to loot an unknown amount of the highly dangerous materials in the first few months of the war.
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Not all was failure, the report said. Six months into the invasion, military and civilian officials began working to cover the problem. Last July, as reported by The NewStandard at the time, workers with the Departments of Defense and Energy quietly removed nearly two tons of radioactive and nuclear materials from Iraq and brought them to the United States.
