Yesterday I was listening to Rush twist the facts (as only he can) and reach deep up inside his anal cavity for some of his more amusing thoughts on the missing? weapons in Iraq.

And now for some actual facts.




Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said Wednesday that he recently spoke to former commanders who led units through the area during the war. But so far, DiRita said, “we don’t know when it disappeared.”

-- Modified on 10/29/2004 4:26:59 AM

-- Modified on 10/29/2004 4:28:07 AM

  Lets invade Syria, Iran, and all the rest of dem rag head, sand niggers cause one of dem surely stole dem weapons.  Maybe Arafat stole dem and took dem wit him on dat plane to France.  Yeah thats it!!  Invade Palestine!!  Its all a big damn conspiracy against W I tell you!!

Coalition forces have cleared 10,033 weapons caches and destroyed 243,000 tons of munitions. Another 163,000 tons of munitions are at secure locations and awaiting destruction.

The jury is still out on when the 380 tons of explosives disappeared. The Washington Post has a good article out this morning that quotes Anthony Cordesman, senior analyst at the Center for International Security:

"There is something truly absurd about focusing on 377 tons of rather ordinary explosives, regardless of what actually happened at al Qaqaa," Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an assessment yesterday. "The munitions at al Qaqaa were at most around 0.06 percent of the total."

The entire Post article underscores the madness of Saddam and the nature of the enemy that Bush ordered our military to topple. Kerry's focus on the IAEA fraud has boomeranged into a focus on the Saddam that Kerry would have let continue in power and the absurdity of sending out ten, twenty, or a thousand teams of UN Inspectors to control the place as corruption in the form of oil-for-food vouchers passed from hand to hand.

The Post article adds another detail:

"On Wednesday, ABC News reported that IAEA documents indicated there were only about 3 tons of RDX remaining at Qaqaa in January 2003, two months before the U.S.-led invasion. Yesterday, however, IAEA officials said records showed another 138 tons of the RDX were being kept then at a military warehouse used by Qaqaa's managers at Mahaweel, 25 miles away. The IAEA has not accounted for an additional 14 tons in the July 2003 Iraqi declaration."

RLTW




-- Modified on 10/29/2004 7:43:25 AM

I agree- this is just a minor example of the total bungling of the invasion, not worht all the hand wringing.   I am sure that there are more weapons and explosives that we never knew about circulating that make this particular pile seem like nothing.

But it does support all the guys in the Pentagon who said that to do it RIGHT, you really needed over 450K troops and more intel!  And the State report that looting was to be expected and prepared for.

What we had is a feat of arms- the fightin war- followed by a cluster fuck of epic proportions that makes the first part look bad.  I can't fault commanders for sitting on their hands- not wanting to thin out and be really vulnerable in a force protection sense.  But that was not their fault.  Those allies' infantry heavy armies would have been gereat to have right then but they were not around.  And there was way too much for 135K guys to do.

And when you realize that this was a SCALED UP plan from that 50K "decapitation " plan that Col. came up with?!?!  Tommy Franks OUGHT to be going postal on Bush, not shilling for him!

We lose track of 380 tons of the highest grade explosives.  Response: that shows that we should have invaded Iraq.  

Response of the conservative analyst in a conservative paper: we're so silly to notice!  The explosives weren't really that high grade as everybody thinks, just "ordinary."  By weight, it's just a small percentage of guns, tanks and explosives (munitions) that we might have lost.

So, to bolster this argument, you remind us Saddam was mad.  Though if I had the Iranians as neighbors after being at their throats for eight bloody years, and then had my clocked cleaned by a superpower, gathering high explosives seems rational to me, just to discourage the opportunistic Iranians.  Saddam was Joseph Stalin: ruthless, murderous, but not mad.

(Didn't we spend most of the Cold War gathering high explosives?)  

About ABC, it's interesting how willing conservatives are to use facts from the loathed "liberal" media when it helps their spin.

/Zin