Your article is dated June 24, 2003. Our troops arrived at the site on April 7th..a few short days after the fall of Saddam.
From the DOD presser:
According to reports from civilians in the area, on or about the 10th of March, Iraqi army forces who were guarding the site reportedly left their weapons -- some of their weapons with the local civilians -- and abandoned the site. We also believe, from talking to the local civilians, that on or about 20 March, the 20th of March, the civilians guarding the site abandoned it also. And, of course, we were conducting our attack across the Kuwaiti border on the 21st. On the 7th of April, U.S. Marines from our land component first arrived at Tuwaitha Site Charlie and assumed the security, and remained there until the 20th of April, when they turned over control of the facility to U.S. Army soldiers from another unit. And Tuwaitha Site Charlie has been secured and under the positive control of U.S. forces since the 7th of April. When the U.S. forces first arrived, they found the Tuwaitha site facility, Tuwaitha Charlie facility, in disarray. The front gate was open and unsecured, and the fence line and barrier wall on the back side of the facility had been breached. And the troops reported that there were no seals on the exterior doors of the buildings. But since taking control of Tuwaitha Site Charlie, no thieves or looters have been allowed inside the facility."
So Greenpeace came in long after the fall of Saddam and decided to blame the US and not the Iraqi's for abandoning the site to looters! I am sorry that some really dumb Iraqi's decided to use radioactive barrels to store their drinking water in(rolling eyes)..but it is hardly the fault of the US!
My point is not about the barrels, of which I could really care less. The point was that Greenpeace was in Iraq during the first days of the police action, 'running around' as you say. And of course this
The canister -- the size of a small car -- contained significant quantities of radioactive yellowcake and had been left open and unattended for more than 20 days on a busy section of open ground near the Tuwaitha plant
The administration official can't very well talk about an official inventory and make wild claims of more material than originally thought if the stuff is just laying around out in the open can they?