IAEA director Mohamed Elbaradei says that nuclear materials in Iraq are missing

The BBC News reports that the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency says that nuclear materials are no longer in Iraq where they were prior to the U.S. invasion and that entire buildings have been dismantled. This would not be significant except that the U.S. has made no disclosure to the IAEA of their actions regarding these issues. The IAEA investigators have not been allowed back into the country since the invasion, and have relied solely on satellite images to analyze the location of materials and the status of buildings.

According to Elbaradei, many of the former storage locations (buildings) have been torn down or dismantled, while much of the nuclear material is missing. In addition, sensitive technology related to nuclear proliferation has come up for sale on the international market or has gone missing from Iraq. The list of missing items includes rocket engines, milling machines, electron beam welders, and high-strength aluminum. Read the details at the link above.

The real question for the U.N. and for the American people becomes the extent to which the U.S. government and its contractors have been involved in the dismantling of the nuclear sites, in the removal of sensitive items from Iraq, and in the failure of the U.S. and the Iraqi interim government to make consistent and thorough reports to the IAEA. As the agency of the U.N. tasked with oversight of nuclear weapons proliferation, one must question why the inspectors have been denied access to the Iraqi nuclear facilities, and why the agency must rely on satellite imagery to gather information.

This just seems to me like another example of the U.S. government running roughshod over the processes of international law and international cooperation. Continually the current administration uses the U.N. to justify the war on Iraq by citing security council resolutions, but alternately denies neutral inspection teams of the U.N. the ability to conduct full reviews of the existing technologies, financial conditions, and health conditions of Iraq. The U.N. can offer assistance to the Iraqi people that the United States alone is currently not prepared to provide. Should we not take greater advantage of the various agencies that could help to bring peace, food, and healthcare to the citizens of the newly 'free' Iraq?