A story from MSNBC, forwarded by Jamie McCarthy to a mailing list I’m on:

Iraqi nuclear site is found looted
Team unable to determine whether materials are missing
By Barton Gellman

NEAR KUT, Iraq, May 3 — 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. The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the Direct Support Team, appeared to offer fresh evidence that the war has dispersed the country’s most dangerous technologies beyond anyone’s knowledge or control.

In all, seven sites associated with Iraq’s nuclear program have been visited by the Pentagon’s “special nuclear programs” teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact, though it remains unclear what materials — if any — had been removed. […]

Meanwhile, at the nearby Tuwaitha storage site, security remains a concern…

Jamie notes: “Tuwaitha is the ‘smoking gun’ that Rush Limbaugh calls ‘Saddam’s Secret Atomic City.'” Says Jamie:

Remind me why we went into Iraq? Wasn’t it to prevent materials such as dirty-bomb components from falling into the hands of terrorists?

Update from Jamie:

My MSNBC link was the Washington Post story; there was a story on the same subject, same day, in the New York Times

Slate’s “Today’s Papers” looks at both and points out a few differences (search down on “Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility”).

The NYT adds in an “unconfirmed report” of missing anthrax, which I accord the status of rumor until it gets, well, confirmed. On the subject of the looting and lax security, it has some more details.

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