Looting of Iraqi nuclear site in April 2003

As the firestorm rages around the lost high explosives in Iraq and Bush and Kerry trade salvos, I'm surprised someone hasn't brought up the looting of the well-known Iraqi nuclear research center at Al Tuwaitha.

Patrick Tyler of the New York Times reported in June 2003 on the loss of the materials and poisoning of local villagers. This center was no secret -- The Times called it "the most conspicuous element of Iraq's nuclear research program since its inception in the 1970's" and it was bombed by the Israelis in 1981. But it wasn't secured.

I was amazed last year after I read the piece that it wasn't causing more of a stir. And it seems even more ominous now. Hmm, let's see ... looted high explosives, looted low-grade nuclear materials, what could somebody make with that?

New York Times. "Barrels Looted at Nuclear Site Raise Fears for Iraqi Villagers." June 8, 2003
http://query.nytimes.com/search/abstract?res=F30B11F93F5D0C7B8CDDAF0894DB404482&incamp=archive:search

You have to pay to download it now. It's too long to post in its entirety, but here's how it begins:

TUWAITHA, Iraq, June 7 — For Iptisam Nuri, a mother of five who was sick with typhoid, the arrival of the barrels in her home at first seemed a godsend.

When the electricity went out during the war, the water-pumping station that serves this area 30 miles southeast of Baghdad shut down, and people were thirsty. Then men from a village near here broke through the fence guarding "Location C" at Saddam Hussein's nuclear complex.

"We had to find something to bring water," said one of the men, Idris Saddoun, 23.

They say they broke into the warehouse, emptied hundreds of barrels of their yellow and brown mud, took them to the wells and canals and filled them with water for cooking, bathing and drinking.

For nearly three weeks, hundreds of villagers who live in the shadow of the high earthen berm and barbed wire fences that surrounded the labyrinth of the Iraqi nuclear program here bathed in and ingested water laced with radioactive contaminants from the barrels.

The barrels, Iraqi and foreign experts say, had held uranium ores, low-enriched uranium "yellowcake," nuclear sludge and other byproducts of Mr. Hussein's nuclear research.

...