To review the essential facts, prior to the war, Iraq’s Al Qa Qaa bunker and weapons complex had roughly 350 tons of high explosives under IAEA seal. After the war, for whatever reason, the complex was either not guarded at all or inadequately guarded. And all those explosives (primarily RDX and HMX) were carted away.
What we’re talking about here isn’t just a bunch of dynamite. This encyclopedia entry says RDX “is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives.” And not 350 pounds, 350 tons.
It is apparently widely believed within the US government that those looted explosives are what in many, perhaps most, cases is being used in car bombs and suicide attacks against US troops. That is, according to TPM sources and sources quoted in this evening’s Nelson Report, where the story first broke.
One administration official told Nelson, “This is the stuff the bad guys have been using to kill our troops, so you can’t ignore the political implications of this, and you would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information.”
— As reported by Josh Marshall
How could any thinking person vote for these people?
Of course, now Bush and the lying criminals who surround him have their spin machine working overtime to blame this latest example of gross incompetence on the Iraqis. The ultimate responsibility for this rests in the Oval office. This is his war killing our sons and daughters and now he has armed the enemy, given them the means to kill more soldiers and civilians. That weapons complex should have been secured, not by ill-equipped barely trained Iraqis, but by the best troops available. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t feel safer. Fire Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft with your votes on November 2.