It becomes clearer by the day that the United States went into Iraq without a solid plan to secure the country and establish the peace.

In a troubling report, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Monday that precision equipment, tools and machines, which Saddam had mothballed after the first Gulf War, have now disappeared.

The IAEA said satellite images show the looting has been systematic, suggesting that it was carried out by people familiar with the equipment’s value to nations or groups intent on building a bomb.

U.N. weapons inspectors had tagged and monitored the equipment for more than 10 years, but inspectors have been barred from returning to the country since the U.S. invasion.

Unfortunately, that equipment will now be nearly impossible to find and secure.