Where are the WMD (this time)?

Do you remember the warehouses of Iraqi documents that the Pentagon released on to the Web because they couldn't be bothered examining them? They disappeared after a bit, and little has been heard since. Well, a man called John Loftus, who is the head of the non-governmental International Intelligence Summit has done the donkey work and released a report at the weekend.

The gist of the new evidence is this: Roughly one-quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid-to-late-1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Saddam's entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses right out from under the Americans' noses.

I'm not one to hunt down and rejoice in instances of American incompetence, but if this is true, then the consequences could extend over a huge area and a long time. This writer links the dispersal to the Syrians' nuclear program and the Israeli raid in September. Not even that is confirmed, but the location and possible use of other Iraqi material is even less confirmed and does not stimulate happy thoughts. I'd be a touch worried.