Their mission is restricted to determining what nuclear materials were looted from Tuwaitha, the Iraqi nuclear installation. They warned U.S. authorities in February about the vulnerability of the facility and the importance of guarding it, yet it was apparently unprotected after the Iraqi regime fell. “U.S. military commanders acknowledged that, after nearly three months on the ground, they remain unequipped to handle the nuclear site” or to assess the damage that has resulted from the ensuing looting. The story that’s circulating is that local residents dumped the uranium out of the facility’s barrels to use them for food storage. International Herald Tribune

Despite assurances in this article that there are no health effects, I have heard that radiation sickness cases have begun to crop up. We may be seeing just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the emerging long-term consequences of the radiation exposure of the looters and their families and neighbors as well as the contamination of the water table and soil by the dispersal of the finely powdered dumped uranium. And that would be the awful extent of it unless it transpired that some of the radioactive material had been diverted onto the black market as well. Oh, and the U.N. team is operating under continuous U.S. military escort to ensure that they restrict their activities to their mandate.