Friday, October 29, 2004

 

248,000 tons of munitions in Iraq still unaccounted for.

Yes 377 tons is small potatoes compared to the total.

Knight Ridder via digby via atrios.

I was struck by "The Defense Department contends that the U.S.-led military coalition has destroyed or secured 402,000 tons of munitions. That leaves at least 248,000 tons still unaccounted for." From Aaron Brown at CNN via Josh Marshal I learned "Iraq had, and it's a frightening number, two-thirds of the total conventional explosives that the US has in its entire inventory," so that would make missing munitions more than 1/4 of DOD munitions. Scared ?

The point noted by digby et al is the nth proof that chalabophilia kills (it might be safe if one wears condoms over both ears) .

"Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.

But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. "exploitation teams" should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn't one of them.

"The top of the list was dominated by nuclear facilities and places where we expected to find chemical and biological weapons," he said. "Iraqi exiles had a very heavy hand in determining which places got looked at first.""

I think that Marx and Fuerbach would agree that no amount of earth shattering vision, power and dynamism and makes up for failing to look for the stuff which has more shattering power than dynamite. Even imperialists have to be reality based.

posted by Robert permalink and comments9:08 PM