I’ve been burned before, and I realize there’s no logic or reason to what the national media finds fascinating, but reports over the last 24 hours surrounding 377 tons of missing explosives in Iraq — and a subsequent cover-up — should be the story that effectively ends Bush’s campaign. It’s the last-minute “October Surprise” everyone’s been waiting for, but it’s the Bush White House that’s stunned.
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, make 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 sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
[…]
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 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 same type of material, and 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.
The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb – the design and the radioactive fuel – are more difficult to obtain.
It doesn’t take much to recognize the litany of costly mistakes the Bush administration has made regarding Iraq, but this one has to rank right up there near the top. U.S. officials knew all about Al Qaqaa and his highly potent explosives, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned us about its significance, but we didn’t safeguard the facility. And no one can explain why. The administration’s catastrophic incompetence knows no bounds, and in the case, has put countless American lives directly at risk.
Simultaneously, we’re almost immediately in “what did they know and when did they know it” territory.
Iraqi officials warned Paul Bremer in May 2004 that Al Qaqaa had been looted. Who did he tell about this rather startling piece of information? At this point, we don’t know and he’s not talking. The NYT also reported that Condoleezza Rice learned of the situation “within the past month” (right around the time she decided to divide her time between national security and the campaign trail) and it is “unclear whether President Bush was informed.”
No one in the Bush administration informed the IAEA, despite the agency’s keen interest in the facility, and the Iraqis didn’t let the agency know until a few weeks ago. Josh Marshall, proving once again why he’s the best in the biz, explains there is ample evidence that U.S. officials have known about Al Qaqaa for more than a year and pressured Iraqis to keep this information covered up.
The political implications of this information, coming to light just eight days before voters go the polls, are overwhelming. Munitions being used to kill U.S. troops in Iraq are the same munitions the Bush administration chose not to safeguard. And when administration officials learned the explosives were missing, they covered it up. No one has any reasonable justification for any of these events.
Bush, I suspect, will quickly run out of targets when looking for someone at which to point the finger. There is no defense for this kind of reckless incompetence. After nearly four years, we’re largely used to the “Excuse Presidency,” but who on earth will Bush blame for this catastrophe? Bill Clinton? The French? Hollywood elite? I can hardly wait to see the spinning commence.