Looters outran the WMD hunters almost every time. "Once a site has been hit with a 2,000-pound bomb, then looted, there's not a lot left," says Maj. Paul Haldeman, the 101st Airborne Division's top NBC officer. In the rush to Baghdad, Coalition forces raced past most suspected WMD sites, and looters took over. After Saddam's fall, there were too few U.S. troops to secure the facilities. Roughly 900 possible WMD sites appeared on the initial target lists. So far, V Corps officers say, fewer than 150 have been searched. "There aren't enough troops in the whole Army," says Col. Tim Madere, the overseer of V Corps's sensitive-site teams. "There just aren't enough experts to do everything."
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Last week American troops finally went back to secure the site. Al Tuwaitha's scientists still can't fully assess the damage; some areas are too badly contaminated to inspect. "I saw empty uranium-oxide barrels lying around, and children playing with them," says Fadil Mohsen Abed, head of the medical-isotopes department. Stainless-steel uranium canisters had been stolen. Some were later found in local markets and in villagers' homes. "We saw people using them for milking cows and carrying drinking water," says Ibrahim. The looted materials could not make a nuclear bomb, but IAEA officials worry that terrorists could build plenty of dirty bombs with some of the isotopes that may have gone missing.

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Not finding WMDs doesn't mean there are none. "We haven't found Saddam Hussein yet," says a senior Bush administration official. "Does that mean he didn't exist?" Last week the ground-forces commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, told NEWSWEEK he's confident evidence will emerge. "We haven't found yet the big, hard evidence, but I think that will come," he said. Officials in Washington spoke more cautiously. "I think we're going to find that they had a weapons-of-mass-destruction program," said Stephen Cambone, under secretary of Defense for intelligence--carefully not saying the weapons themselves would be found. Proving Saddam's guilt is almost beside the point. The urgent job now is to keep his WMD materials out of terrorist hands--if it isn't already too late.

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