"And the American People are Safer!"

Remember all that talk about how we had to go into Iraq to keep Saddam from giving weapons to "our enemies", and how silly that all seemed after we found out that tons of high explosive had vanished from al Qaqaa because we didn't leave anyone to look after it? Well, as Ron Popeil might say, "Don't answer yet!"

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, since determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons in Iraq's prewar arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday.

A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, American officials said.

The officials said they did not know whether missiles from Iraq remain there or have been smuggled into other countries, though a senior administration official said Friday that "there is no evidence that they have left the country.''

It was unclear whether Iraqi military or intelligence personnel removed the missile systems during the initial invasion of Iraq or whether they disappeared from warehouses after major combat ended.

Shoulder-fired missiles - which are small, lethal and easy to use - are attractive weapons for terrorists. In recent months, Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda intends to use them to shoot down planes.

I'm hoping most of these are the older-generation versions that are not quite so easy to use for knocking airliners from the sky as our current ones. An older model was shot at a plane in Kenya a while back, and missed. Even so, I bet they're good for taking out helicopters, like maybe ones providing air support for house-to-house fighting in Fallujah. Not a pretty thought.