Scandal

This story actually broke yesterday around the blogosphere, and has thankfully appeared this morning on no less than the front page of the New York Times.

The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year. The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes." Administration officials said yesterday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

As if Abu Ghraib wasn't proof enough, this is rank incompetence. This finally, graphically and tragically puts the lie to the Bush team's assertion that they're somehow better - insurmountably better - on the war on terror than anyone else. This crowd - the one that insulted "Old Europe", which publicly vilified the UN, which had no use for NGOs in the war on terror - has received its comeuppance. The IAEA had these weapons under surveillance before we went into Iraq. They knew where thus stuff was. When we came in, we lost track of it? Of 380 tons of explosives? We lost it? It's gone? And according to them, we had enough troops to win the peace? I can't stress this enough - through its rank, juvenile incompetence, this administration misplaced 380 tons of explosives. Explosives which, quite probably, are now being used by Islamist and Baathist insurgents/guerrillas to blow up American and coalition servicemen and women, blow up Iraqi "collaborators", and innocent bystanders. Hooray for America. And we wonder why they don't appreciate this occupation. I predict that no one will be held accountable for this gross misconduct, just like no one will be held accountable for Abu Ghraib (except for Lynndie England). I predict that no one will be fired or resign in shame. I predict that Cheney will tell us that this was all planned, and Bush will tell us it's hard work. Let's fire the one with whom the buck really stops. Let's fire the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces. Let's do it next Tuesday.