AP - One of the first U.S. military units to reach the Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad after the invasion of Iraq did not have orders to search for the nearly 400 tons of explosives that are missing from the site, the unit spokesman said Tuesday.
When troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the Al-Qaqaa base a day or so after other coalition troops seized Baghdad on April 9, 2003, there were already looters throughout the facility, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.
The soldiers "secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area," Wellman wrote in an e-mail message to The Associated Press. "Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.
"Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq," he wrote.
First of all, where does the AP get off reporting that it was nearly 400 tons of explosives? 400 tons is only twenty freaking tons away from the actual 380 tons that were stolen.
Another error in this report is that they're saying the 101st Airborne 2nd Brigade was at Al Qaqaa first. I'm not sure that's true. Other reports have indicated that the Third Infantry Division was at Al Qaqaa a week before the 101st Airborne 2nd Brigade was.
Also, in order for us to believe that the weapons were stolen after the United States invaded Iraq we have to be willing to buy into the idea that terrorists loaded up 380 tons of explosives into the approximately 20 or so 18-wheeler sized trucks that would be required to move it across the desert. And we have to believe that they did this in the midst of the on-going invasion without coalition forces noticing.
Not bloody likely if you ask me.
I'd tend to agree with that last statement in the article, however. There were literally hundreds of thousands of tons of these type of explosives littered in caches all over Iraq. The 380 tons at Al Qaqaa (if they existed at all) would have made up about 0.019% of the total amount of those type of explosives in Iraq. Clearly we couldn't have secured all of the explosives.
We did secure, and are now destroying, most of the explosives in Iraq. A small cache of the explosives may have gotten away. I just don't see where that's a big deal. Its unfortunate, but looking at the bigger picture it seems almost unavoidable.
Unless of course you're a Presidential candidate who needs an issue to get behind in the week before the election.
Update:
