Yeah, yeah: communist Times tells lies all lies.

TB: So we're supposed to believe that there were vast organized teams of "looters" ready to go in Iraq if we invaded, with trucks, heavy equipment, and all the rest.

Yes. That's what happened. It took teams to do that much work involving that much heavy equipment and that much transportation of items that were large enough that they typically won't fit in a suburban garage. They must have been somewhat organized because that's what the work required. They were looters because the verb "loot" means:

1 a : to plunder or sack in war b : to rob especially on a large scale and usually by violence or corruption
2 : to seize and carry away by force especially in war
intransitive senses : to engage in robbing or plundering especially in war

I can't think of a word that describes better what took place, but maybe Websters is in on the conspiracy. To add to your ammunition, you and Hitchens aparantly missed the "extensive" use of the words "razed", "stripped", "dismantled", and "stolen", Which words - in my opinion - don't fit as well since they do not have the wartime connotation that "looted" does. Though I admit that loot often has the connotation that armed force was involved in the process, which might not have been the case, here.

We're supposed to believe that they would loot primarily weapons sites instead of commerical factories and other sites with things of great value on the black market.

The piece actually said: "highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away." So was your description a mistake, spin, or just a lie? [If that was too subtle, try this: where did the word "primarily" come from?]

There's a much simpler explanation. That this was a pre-planned effort of the Iraqi government designed to destroy or move anything loose related to weapons work.

Man, if this is the theory you wanted to discus, why on earth not just bring it up as a topic for discussion?????????????????? Why do you first have to pretend that someone is trying to convince us that it is not the case????????????? Why are you unhappy unless every single conversation takes place in paranoid lala-land??????????????

The article raises many interesting questions, chief among them why a completely non-existent weapons program would have so much weapons-related stuff lying around.

Did you miss all the references to "monitored equipment"? How do you think we knew anything was missing? S'pose it was because we already knew what was there before it went missing? If you assert there is any new info in this piece about what equipment was in pre-war Iraq, then this is another case of mistake/spin/lie.