This makes me nuts:

Villagers suffer radiation sickness after looting nuclear power plants

Doctors fear that hundreds of Iraqis may be suffering from radiation poisoning, following the widespread looting of the country's nuclear facilities.

Seven nuclear facilities have been damaged or effectively destroyed by ransackers since the end of the war. Technical documents, sensitive equipment and barrels containing radioactive material are believed to have been stolen.

Many residents in villages close to the huge Tuwaitha Nuclear Facility, about seven miles south of Baghdad, were showing signs of radiation illness last week, including rashes, acute vomiting and severe nosebleeds.

As Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed last month villagers began looting barrels of the uranium oxide, known as "yellowcake", from the site, which they then emptied to use to store water, milk and yoghurt....

--Telegraph

Hundreds! Allowing this to happen is like dropping a huge bomb in a crowded neighborhood.

Mohammed Zaidan, the former chief agricultural engineer at Tuwaitha, said he had visited the nuclear site with Dr Hamid Al Bahli, a nuclear scientist, on April 7 when American troops were approaching from the south.

The soldiers, he said, assured the men they would secure Tuwaitha, but two weeks later they returned to find there were no American soldiers, only hundreds of people looting the facility and dogs rolling around in the contaminated uranium oxide.

"The soldiers had promised us they would secure the site but they did not and we wonder why," he said. "Perhaps it was because they always knew there were no real weapons there, despite all their claims. But, nevertheless, these materials represent a major health hazard and before long we may start to see people developing cancer and deformed babies because they did not stop the looting."

Saddam gassed people out of evil intent. Leadfooted America overthrew him with, we're told, good intent, then let chaos reign afterward, out of clumsiness or stupidity or calculation. Maybe the right-wingers are right and Bush's heart is pure, but funny thing -- people who die or become severely ill from being deliberately gassed are no deader and no sicker than people who nuked themselves as a result of "benign" neglect.

(Link from Cursor.)