[Happy2BMe]

Anybody seen Hans Blitz in the last couple of days?

[Aggie Mama]

Interesting that Joe Lockhart is the primary "news" source quoted by the AP......

[BigSkyFreeper]

Democrats setting up their "see I told you so!".

[Happy2BMe]

Apparently Lockart took a look at the polls over the weekend and decided the "Terrorism is such a nuisance." approach wasn't hacking it - ping. "This material was monitored and controlled by U.N. inspectors before the invasion of Iraq. Thanks to the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration, we now have no idea where it is," Lockart said. He demanded the White House explain "why they failed to safeguard these explosives and keep them out of the hands of our enemies."

____________________________________

[atomicpossum]

IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the 2003 invasion and have not yet been able to return despite ElBaradei's repeated urging that the experts be allowed back in to finish their work.

SO, COULDN'T SADDAM HAVE ROUNDED IT UP AND SENT IT TO SYRIA BEFORE THE US GOT THERE?

I don't see the IAEA 'holding the fort' until the last second, and moving 3/4 of a million pounds of explosives isn't going to be done in a lone truck. It would require some logistics-- isn't it more likely that the Regime got the stuff out before the US could come in and find it?

[mewzilla]

This reminds me a lot of the so-called looting of that Baghdad museum.

[syriacus]

The explosives included HMX and RDX, which can be used to demolish buildings but also produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weaponry,

"Weapons of "semi" mass destruction" [WSMD] have gone missing.

Did they disappear soon after the invasion began... After Chirac told Saddam he was sorry he couldn't stop the US, but before the US got control of the country?

[PeteB570]

There is a long thread on this that has sunk off to page two. It was started last night at 10:21 EDT. Well over 200 posts.

Look over on the right bar and you'll see it.

[thingumbob]

File this under the heading......

See, See, the world is not safer with Bush

Lockharts new "vote for sKerry/Leftwards" ad campaign is revealed (I prefer reviled, but the dems don't care what I think....I'm just a peasant in their fiefdom.)

[Anti-Bubba182]

Soldiertech_Explosives

"...Composition C4: 91% RDX, 9% non-explosive plasticizers. This compound is used in mines and hand grenades..."

The material missing is not esoteric material. These are common military explosives.

Why they did not destroy the bunker in the first place is another question, but not one on a Presidential level.

[kittymyrib]

And all this time the left and the partisan media have insisted there were NO WMD. I guess they CAN have it both ways.

[Puddleglum]

I suppose the US was working with the Iraqis to guard the site, and it is always necessary to work with native personnel to help liberate a country - if you are truly liberating it, which the US is, and not conquering it. My suspicion is that the theft, to the degree it occurred, was facilitated by Iraqi inside help.

Now here comes the position Kerry always takes and the media never calls him on: he will say the US should not have "outsourced" part of the effort of guarding the site to Iraqis, just like he said we should not have "outsourced" part of our effort at Tora Bora. Well, if we had gone it alone, he would have accused the US of imperialism and not building a coalition.

To grant a country liberty, you have to give them the opportunity to succedd or fail through their own efforts. I am sorry this has made Iraq more dangerous, but it is a necessary step if they are not to be simply a US colony in the Middle East.

The media should ask Kerry how many men he would have drafted to provide a 100% US effort, or what he would have given to France and Russia, above and beyond Oil-for-Food graft money, to get them to send troops. He has no answer, and if he did, France and Russia would immediately rebut it.

[HankReardon]

There's more to this story, I'm sure we'll hear the rest of it from Rush today. LIMBAUGH/HANNITY '08

[ol painless]

I like this headline better.

"Tons Of US Explosives Missing In Iraq"

[Doe Eyes]

If Clinton was still President, I'd blame this on his incompetent leadership. But since Bush is President, I'm torn between "what's the big deal" and "its still Clinton's fault".

[Brizick]

This drives me crazy!

Let's put it in perspective . . . 350 to 380 tons would take approximately 11 to 13 standard (28 ft) dump truck loads to move it.

This assumes each load is about 30 tons. Overloaded for Illinois roads, but hey this is Iraq!

[DocRock]

The IEAE Refused To Let U.S. Troops Remove 500 Tons of Uranium From Iraq!


San Diego Union Tribune

[OkiMusashi]

Nice article. Two questions:

1. When did the first American soldier drive up to the gates of that ammo dump?

2. Was it empty when he got there?

[Austin Willard Wright]

Err....George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld are in in charge of this particular fiasco, not Hans Blix

[Edit35]

After reading several versions of this story about missing explosives, it is not at all clear how much of the HMX material was even there in the days leading up to the war.

Also, the HMX (or whatever) was under Iraqi-UN control and could very well have disappeared before the April 2003 US liberation. It could also be a case of bad record keeping.

The NYSlimes is portraying this story as the US losing explosive material that WE brought to Iraq to fight the war on terror.

That is false. This HMX was bought by Saddam Hussein from France, China and Yugoslavia, and was being stored for some nefarious purpose. It's unclear how much was even left prior to the US liberation in April 2003.

[Sender]

There were, and are, so many tons of explosives and ordnance all over Iraq that we will never know the extent of it all. This is obviously a last-ditch Kerry team effort to bolster "the mess in Iraq" as a Bush failure. Unfortunately 350 tons of explosives is probably just the tip of Saddam's iceberg. The bad guys have enough bang stuff to keep making car bombs until the cows come home, or until we kill them all.