The Bush administration seems to be finally acknowledging that maybe the intelligence they had prior to the war may not have been nearly as good as they thought it was. The Washington Post and MSNBC are reporting that "planners and those participating in the hunt" worried that information and materials related to WMD may have been stolen during the looting and chaos that has been plaguing Iraq since Saddam's regime fell.

It seems to me that this is just more evidence that the Bush administration simply did not plan at all well (or maybe they just didn't plan at all) for what to do after the main fighting of the war had been completed and the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq began. While they managed to have a company of Marines available to secure the Ministry of Oil, there has been a great deal of condemnation for the many other things that we seem to have been able to secure. Sadly, while the loss of the national treasues of the Iraqi museums and libraries is cultural tragedy, the lack of security for the sites the administration believed were locations where WMD may have been being manufactured or stored could end up being catastrophic.

[I]f such weapons or the means of making them have indeed been removed from the centralized control of former Iraqi officials, high-ranking U.S. officials acknowledged, then the war may prove to aggravate the proliferation threat that President Bush said he fought to forestall.

"It's a danger," Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a telephone interview. There are signs, he said, "that some of the looting is actually strategic." Former Baath Party and Iraqi government officials appear to be "doing at least some of the looting" of government facilities, he said, "including those that might have records or materials" relating to weapons of mass destruction." [Emphasis mine]

It is absolutely ridiculous that the Bush administration did not have better plans for securing the sites they believed were likely to hold key evidence for the WMDs they claim Iraq has. Apparently, it has only been in the last few days that they have been moving to get the sites they have not yet checked secured, though it may already be too late there, as well.