"The fighting had not yet ended completely at this time. Drudge reads the story as saying the weapons were gone when the 101 got there. Miklasewki's actual report is not at all clear on that. I think, barring more info, the Dems can still claim that the 101 because it still had fighting to do could not secure the base, and the base was then looted. This would allow Dems to attack the planning for Iraq war as being insufficient in troop strength to secure the country. The results of which have led to deadly attacks on US troops by weapons produced from the unprotected explosives. I just think it's possible we're celebrating much too soon. We need to know what the 101 did at alQaqaa. What was it tasked to find? What did it find and how long did it secure the facility?"
This is from Miklasewki's report:
"April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX..."
It's saying that when the troops arrived, the high explosives were already gone. That's exactly what Drudge et al is reporting.
You're probably right, but I spent 8 years listening to Clinton parse the English language, and maybe that affects the way I read Mik's report. It just confuses me that he doesn't say the Cemtex was gone when the 101 arrived. He says they didn't find it, and that they were at al QaQaa temporarily. He then jumps to the Iraqis saying it was looted due to poor security. Like I said ten posts ago, it's double talk.
Our troops were looking for HMX and RDX but didn't find any.