Iraqi Calls Arms Looting a Tightly Run Operation -NYT

[Rose Siding]

In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.

The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants looking for valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away.
...
"They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting."

Dr. Araji's statements came just a week after a United Nations agency revealed that approximately 90 key sites in Iraq had been looted or razed after the American-led invasion. Satellite imagery analyzed by two United Nations groups - the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic - confirm that some of the sites identified by Dr. Araji appear to be totally or partly stripped, according to senior officials at those agencies. Those officials said that they could not comment on all of Dr. Araji's assertions, because they had been barred from Iraq since the invasion.

http://nytimes.com/2005/03/13/international/middleeast/13loot.html?hp&ex=1110690000&en=18e0f2e2d3ce7f37&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Cocoa]

1. the U.S. was too busy tearing down statues

American military officials in Baghdad did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the findings. But American officials have said in the past that while they were aware of the importance of some of the installations, there was not enough military personnel to guard all of them during and after the invasion.

White House officials, apprised of the Iraqi account by The New York Times, said it was already well known that many weapons sites had been looted. They had no other comment.