k wrote:
] ] This has been rumored in Washington for several days. And
] ] now the Nelson Report has broken the story.
] ]
] ]
] ] Some 350 tons of high explosives (RDX and HMX), which were
] ] under IAEA seal while Saddam was in power,
] ] were looted during the early days of the US occupation.
] ] Like so much else, it was just left unguarded.
]
] [ It's all over the media now, in varying degrees of
] aggressiveness. The NYT article (iirc) puts the number at 380
] metric tonnes, almost a million pounds of easily transported,
] safe-to-handle, high explosive material, now in the hands of
] enemies. Such a bad situation for our troops. -k]

What perplexes me about this story, is that it's not *new* news. This is something that happened over a year ago, during the looting. There were *lots* of stories then about Bad Things that occurred at that time. Historical artifacts taken, radioactive yellowcake powder being scattered all over the village near Tuwaitha... Kerry's even referred to this stuff in the debates, about ammo dumps being looted. So that this story of explosives being taken *then* is being released as a fresh news story *now* smells very very suspicious to me.

Elonka wrote:
] What perplexes me about this story, is that it's not *new*
] news. This is something that happened over a year ago, during
] the looting. There were *lots* of stories then about Bad
] Things that occurred at that time. Historical artifacts
] taken, radioactive yellowcake powder being scattered all over
] the village near Tuwaitha... Kerry's even referred to this
] stuff in the debates, about ammo dumps being looted. So that
] this story of explosives being taken *then* is being released
] as a fresh news story *now* smells very very suspicious to me

[ You're right about the fact that at the beginning there were many stories regarding various sorts of looting going on throughout Iraq, but I don't believe this particular issue was one of them. At least I don't recall it, and none of the news organizations are indicating that they had already covered the explosives theft.

The truth of the matter is that the IAEA knew well about this material, and cautioned the US to secure it, specifically, in a report they prepared. It *is* curious that the news is being released now. I've heard the gamut of theories, ranging from a purposeful coverup by the administration (which i'm not convinced of) to a retaliatory leak by the intelligence community that has been so demonized by the administration. That being said, this isn't really a matter of intel since, as i said, the IAEA and UN were on top of the situation and told us specifically about it.

Another odd thing is the quote from an administration source that Rice had been told about this matter within the last month. If the material disappeared 18 months ago (or 12, or 2) how is it that the National Security Advisor is only just finding out?

The insinuation in your post is, of course, that this is a calculated release, timed to do most damage to the president's re-election campaign. It's not impossible, but at least I see no evidience that Kerry is tied to it. Politics has gotten nothing but dirtier in the past few cycles and such carefully strategized handling of the news should be no surprise by now, even if it's not particularly appreciated.

All that being said, the facts of the case are bad enough regardless of when they were made public. 800,000 pounds of high explosives should have been on the short list of things to keep track of. Of course the argument to that is that we had only so many troops and many such targets to keep track of... to which one can only respond that a number of military advisors made note of the need for more troops from the very beginning. -k]