As James has said -- see here for example -- our regime needs the threat of war and terrorism to keep it in power. Last week in a NY Times column, Paul Krugman said:
Let me be frank. Why is the failure to find any evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, or vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons (a few drums don't qualify -- though we haven't found even that) a big deal? Mainly because it feeds suspicions that the war wasn't waged to eliminate real threats. This suspicion is further fed by the administration's lackadaisical attitude toward those supposed threats once Baghdad fell. For example, Iraq's main nuclear waste dump wasn't secured until a few days ago, by which time it had been thoroughly looted. So was it all about the photo ops?
It's in the paid archives of the Times now, so go here for an excerpt.
That is the only mention of this fact in the U.S. media that I have been able to find via Google News. The News 24 (South Africa) web site has this:
On April 11, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the facility and nearby Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center urgently required protection from looters. US Central Command sent soldiers from the Army's Third Infantry Division.But inspectors visiting the site on Saturday [May 3] found that the soldiers had not been able to keep looters out, and had moreover been allowing Iraqis who said they were employees of the facility to go inside.
