The Adminstration’s two cardinal sins: dishonesty and incompetence
350 tons of “the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives” was left unguarded by Bush and the US Occupying force after we took Iraq. While the US government looked the other way (or didn’t look at all), it all disappeared. Where did it go? Well, “it’s still in Iraq, and this is the most likely primary source of the explosives which have been used to blow up Humvees and in all the deadly car bomb attacks since the Occupation began.”. Talking Points Memo points out that ” it puts the consequences of the administration’s incompetent management of the war and occupation in a whole new light.”
One administration official told Nelson, “This is the stuff the bad guys have been using to kill our troops, so you can’t ignore the political implications of this, and you would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information.”
(In addition to being used to blow up our unarmored Humvees — only about 10% of the approx 14,000 in Iraq are armored — this particular type of explosive is used the “explosives in triggering devices for nuclear weapons”. Isn’t that super?)
“The administration has known about this for at least a year. But they’ve gone to great lengths to hide the facts both from monitoring organizations like the IAEA but also, by extension, from the American public.”
As another administration source told Nelson, “What the hell were WE doing in the year and a half from the time we knew the stuff was gone, is obviously a huge question, and you can imagine why no one [in the Administration] wants to face up to it, certainly not before the election.”
I wonder what other stories are being suppressed?