After Saddam fell it was bad enough that the Iraqi museums were looted, that the only government building deemed worthy of guarding was the oil ministry, and that the attitude towards the looters was that they were just a few "dead-enders." Now we learn that not only were regular munitions dumps unguarded, but the site which held extraordinarily high explosives which "can be used in the triggering process for a nuclear weapon" was raided. Worse, the IAEA, which had the site "under seal" prior to the war, was not told of the theft of 350 tons of this stuff. Why not?
A highly informed official offered the assessment that, "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."
Read the gory details here. Then ask yourself whether an Administration so seemingly willing to play politics with munitions which have killed over 1,000 US soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines (and uncounted Iraqis), and which could be used to trigger nuclear weapons deserves to remain in office beyond November 2.
Update: The above link takes you to a specific post on Josh Marshall's site, where he quotes The Nelson Report, a political newsletter based in DC. You should probably start at the top of Josh's pages, since he's continued to cover this after I posted the original link up there, and there have been two postings since that one.
Posted by Linkmeister at October 24, 2004 02:41 PM