"BUSH WILL SAVE US"-rm

Yglesias, DeLong and Atrios all point to this:

NEAR KUT, Iraq, May 3 -- A specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched after a month of official indecision to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, today found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing.

The discovery at the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility was the second since the end of the war in which a known nuclear cache was plundered extensively enough that authorities could not rule out the possibility that deadly materials had been stolen. The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the Direct Support Team, appeared to offer fresh evidence that the war has dispersed the country's most dangerous technologies beyond anyone's knowledge or control.

In all, seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program have been visited by the Pentagon's "special nuclear programs" teams since the war ended last month. None was found to be intact, though it remains unclear what materials -- if any -- had been removed.

That's right: We went to Iraq under the pretext that we were going after Saddam's WMD's, but once we take over the country we let nuclear materials -- perfect for, say, a dirty bomb, as Yglesias points out -- possibly be looted!?!?

Anyway, on this occasion, DeLong (a berkeley economics prof) sees this as an occasion to realize that, whaddyaknow, occasional Republican leadership ain't that much of a good thing. ("We need them out, and some adults in")