oh holy holy crap

it seems that everyday i go to read the news over at the bbc or cnn, and everyday the leading story is some new attack or mishap in iraq. actually it doesn't seem that way, it is that way. and today was no exception.

the link below is to a bbc story about missing explosives from a former iraqi military complex. and it's not paltry amount either, there are 350 TONS of the stuff out there somewhere, and we have no idea there. hell, we didn't even know they were missing until now!

i'd like to dissect this article and point out several of the more disturbing parts to you:

"The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the explosives vanished from the al-Qaqaa facility near Baghdad during looting after the invasion." ... "at some point after 9 April 2003." .... Are you shitting me? We haven't figured this out for a year and a half! Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe the whole point of this war was to safeguard the "weapons of mass destruction" and to get them out of the hands of the nutcases who could use them to blow us up. And it's taken us a year and a half to look in this place and figure out that something was amiss???

"The IAEA said the US-led coalition had been warned about the danger posed by the explosives on several occasions." You would think that this was something that the ARMY wouldn't need warning about. Good lord. "It says the coalition forces were specifically told to keep the material secured." Bang up job on that one fellas.

"The IAEA spokesman said the Iraqi interim government had alerted the agency about the missing explosives on 10 October." It would appear that the interim government is more capable than they are given credit for... apparently more capable than us.

"BBC defence and security correspondent David Bamford said the IAEA had valid grounds for concern because even a kilogram of these high-powered explosives was enough to level a building." Oh goody. And how much of this stuff was there? Oh, that's right, 350 TONS!

"Nobody seems willing to take responsibility, he said, with the IAEA arguing the war forced it to suspend its monitoring activities and the US-led occupation force putting other priorities ahead of preventing looting." Now, it seems the IAEA has a solid case to me... they were prevented from monitoring the site once the invasion began. But it would seem to me that the occupation force would want to prevent looting at the freakin' military complex with the explosives that the knew were there and had been warned by the IAEA to keep an eye on.

'The paper [NY Times] claims US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the missing explosives only in the past month. It is not yet known whether US President George W Bush has been informed." Speechless.

So in summary, the United States invaded Iraq presumably to safeguard the weapons of mass destruction possessed by the Iraqi government. After finding no evidence of the chemical and biological weapons they assured us were there, they didn't bother to secure the hundreds of tons of explosives that are probably being used in car bombs against them and innocent civilians right now. And they have been missing for a year and a half and we've only just discovered this now. Oi.

This is why I don't have faith in this administration and their ability to lead this country. They went to war on crappy intelligence with a crappy game plan and are trying to convince us that John Kerry would be the one that would fuck this thing up? Too late fellas, you have done a quite a thorough job of that yourselves.

Link