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For instance, in the underground bunker where he *assumes* nuclear research was being conducted, enough to cause a technician to get sick from one day's exposure, there would certainly be residual radiation.

Um...do you have a remote grasp of Radioactive Chemistry? The soldier's exposure might not have been contact, but energy (Gamma ray).

This isn't MST3K when they had the AWESOME phrases from the Gamera episode...

(Scientists)"Don't go in there, there's Radiation!"
(Tom Servo)"And as everyone knows, it can only affect you if you touch it!"

Unless the radioactive elements actually escaped and physically touched surfaces, there would be NO contamination...contrary to popular myth, radioactive spills CAN be cleaned (google the word "DuPont Count Off") the only POSSIBLE remaining sign would be the effects on materials by radioactive energy bombardment...but the IAEA is run by an Islamazi, and I'm sure Saddam's scientists either removed or repaired over any damage areas.

Seriously, if the "lab" was self-contained"...only the lab would have evidence...outside of power/water/ventillation connections that a trained eye might be able to observe and connect to...but I have serious doubts the IAEA was interested in anything more than a Joe Wilson sweet tea party.

I seriously doubt the Iraqis are organized enough to keep everything this clean. No other government has been able to do so. Including ours.

And I wasn't suggesting relying on the IAEA. I think we can muster independent scientists from UK, America and New Europe. But we still don't have the evidence.

I think there is evidence, certainly from Saddam's earlier program. The fact that the White House makes no real effort to muster such evidence and present it indicates to me that they don't consider the proof of WMD to be important to their policy objectives. Is it important to some people at FR and other conservative sites? Yes. But not, apparently, to them. What the WH does resist is that the intel which indicated WMD is questioned or reinterpreted or that Dims try to pretend that someone lied to them. But that is a political fight, not one about the substance of the WMD allegations.

It's hard to say that we've conducted an all-out search for WMD. For instance, Saddam's henchmen said that they poured the chemical weapons on the ground. Why not go test for it? If they didn't allow it to disperse in the atmosphere, it should leave some traces in the soil. Heck, the EPA could probably discover if some evil corporation ever so much as farted upwind of Iraq. Detecting the mass dumping of chemical weapons anywhere in Iraq should be something we can discover and document.

Given how many research labs and storage areas Saddam had, there has to be some traces of the work that was done. Simply collecting that information would be helpful. And yet, no real effort has been made.

A lot is made of the aluminum tube found in the garden of Saddam's chief nuke scientist. It is supposed to be the precision-machined aluminum tube used to make a centrifuge. Yet we know it takes thousands of centrifuges to produce enough material for a bomb in a five to ten year period, assuming enough electricity is available (live TVA in WW II). So, assuming that part is a prototype, where are all the rest of the machines? Where are the materials to be used to make them?

This kind of thing is why we don't see the Bush WH making claims for WMD. There probably is proof of WMD, certainly of the old programs before Gulf War I. But they just aren't interested in finding and presenting it. Or they believe that the antiwar types will be just as opposed if they do finally prove WMD.