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Iraq's unaccounted for weapons

AP via CBS:

Dozens of ballistic missiles are missing in Iraq. Vials of dangerous microbes are unaccounted for. Sensitive sites, once under U.N. seal, stand gutted today, their arms-making gear hauled off by looters, or by arms-makers.

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Similarly, the main body of the U.S. report discusses Iraq's Samoud 2s, but doesn't note that many of these ballistic missiles haven't been found. Only via an annex table does the report disclose that as many as 36 Samouds may be unaccounted for in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.

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The Iraq Survey Group, which ended its arms hunt in December, says a complete accounting of the Samouds "may not be possible due to various factors."

Besides the Samouds, up to 34 Fatah missiles — a similar but solid-fueled weapon — are also unaccounted for. And more than 600 missile engines may be missing; the U.S. document simply doesn't report their status.

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Samouds and Fatahs are only the biggest items on the "unaccounted-for" list. The smallest are bits of bacterial growth for biological weapons.

The Iraqis said this bioweapons material was destroyed years ago, but not all is documented. Inspectors simply don't know whether vials of seed stock — including deadly anthrax and botulinum A bacteria — may have been used to nurture more batches that are unaccounted for.

"From bits in these original vials, you can create a hundred others, and we just want to know, has all this been traced?" Perricos asked. The Iraq Survey Group lists the fate of bioweapons seed stocks under "Unresolved Issues."

The U.S. arms hunters' findings further cloud the picture on another item, 155mm mustard-gas shells with a dead-end paperwork trail.

At least 13,000 shells filled with mustard were destroyed under U.N. supervision in the 1990s, but 550 were never found. Iraqis told U.N. inspectors they were destroyed in a fire. Now the U.S. teams say an imprisoned Iraqi official told them a Special Republican Guard unit retained the chemical rounds, and Iraq was about to declare them to U.N. inspectors when the Americans invaded.

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More than a year later, in the Netherlands and Jordan, U.N. inspectors found the first evidence of what had happened: More than 40 missile engines somehow had made their way out of Iraq and into foreign scrap yards, along with four specialized vessels from Iraq's Fallujah chemical plant, which made ingredients for poison gases.

But "we have just seen a very thin sliver" of the Iraqi materiel being bought and sold in the Middle East, Perricos said of those finds.

While this story started witht he premise that no WMD had been found in Iraq, it winds up making the case that many of Iraq's weapons are just unaccounted for. The fact that Saddam could not account for the weapons was one reason why the US went to war. The fact that many of the weapons are still unaccounted for is troubling, but it is not proof that the weapons were not there. The AP is stuggling with trying to make the case that the US did not do a good job of getting control of weapons that they have previously said were never there.