A Tiny Fraction of the Total

Well, not necessarilly the same thing, as very, very high explosives are indeed a subset of “munitions”, which include just about everything that goes “bang” or “boom”.

I would of course rather than everything at al Qa Qaa had been secured. But the charge is that the loss of those explosives is evidence of either “gross incompetence,” or that we did not have enough troops. Showing the loss as a percentage of what was *not* lost is thus important. I should point out that the amount of explosives “lost” (ie, that amount that is now in the hands of insurgents, whether through the mistakes of Coalition troops or otherwise) is more like tens of thousands of tons. Even so, that implies that something close to 90% of the explosives in the country were secured and destroyed. That doesn’t sound like gross incompetence to me. As for the “we didn’t have enough troops” charge, there is probably some truth to that. But even if we flooded the place with millions of Coalition troops (from somewhere), does anybody think we could have secured 100% of the bad stuff? Especially if obtaining those additional troops would have required delaying the start of war, and thus allowing more time for weapons to be dispersed?

This story is the biggest piece of propoganda so far. I would rather have this “skawwwy” stuff under my vehicle than a 155 artillary round. 90% of explosives were controlled and part of the 10% wasn’t even in munition form, just bags and crates of the crap. Maybe Rambo can take some “skawwwy” explosives and blow up the russian army, but explosives unfocused by hard steel lose their energy so fast they have to be in contact with armor to damage it, ie it needs to be slapped onto a tank to blow it up. Going off underneath it will just annoy the crew. On the other hand, a large artillary round just needs to be near a target to damage it.

Screw the retards who fell for this and the monsters who promoted it.

There’s an even less reassuring quote from “a senior administration official” here

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/25/iraq.explosives/

The quote:

“In the grand scheme — and on a grand scale — there are hundreds of tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are unaccounted for in Iraq,” the official said.

Oh, that’s alright then.

There’s an element of truth to what Jet, brett, etc. say, but only in support of a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose argument.

Those of us opposed to the Bush administration’s conduct of the war believe that it involved extensive incompetence, mendacity, misfeasance and malfeasance at every stage. This belief is well supported by evidence, but of course much of that evidence is anecdotal, testimony by expert but arguably interested individuals, or lacking in detail.

When absolutely, ironclad, specific, detailed evidence of Bush admin. failure appears, in the nature of things it will apply to only a small part of this larger picture. An ongoing, across the board failure isn’t the sort of thing to which there can be an eyewitness.

So, yes, Qa Qaa is just a small part of the story. but it is a particularly well documented and, there is every reason to beleive, a typical one.

Brett, jet etc. are essentially taking the position that we cannot offer evidence for any particualr failure of the administration until we have equally compelling evidence for every other failure. Which of course means we can’t offer evidence of Bush admin. failure at all. Which is of course the point.

Brilliant analogy, because we all know that conducting a war has the same level of difficulty as moving one’s family across country.

This is totally understandable; the military was far too busy securing the oil wells to be concerned with munitions.

U.S. says all of Iraq’s oil fields secured from the Houston Chroniclae, April 14, 2003, 8:42AM

Or maybe an insignificant number of soldiers were used to guard the oil wells?

Anyone remember when Saddam torched the oil fields during Gulf War I and it was going to be a major ecological disaster? Anyone remember driving to work or using something made of plastic, or eating food that had to be shipped in instead of growing it in their back yard?

Anyone remember Turkey not letting half of the coalition troops get to Iraq through Turkey?

I remember all these things.

One of them. If I can choose something simple like where I’m going to eat lunch based on multiple crtieria, I don’t think it’s too difficult to assume that invading Iraq was based on multiple criteria.

It’s beyond my skills to be able to determine what the main reason was. Probably each person in the administration had different main reasons and those main reasons could have changed on a person by person basis through time.

Off the top of my head, I think I could come up with fifteen reasons to invade Iraq.

None for all the reasons that Iraq had. Iraq was unique.

The second tier would include Iran and Syria. Sudan would probably welcome an invasion about now.

OK, I’ll give it a try. (In no particular order)

Iraq –
Human rights violations
Oil
WMD
Oil for food / sanctions failing
Violating treaty signed after first Gulf War
Harboring terrorists (Abu Nidal)
Support of active terrorists (payments to families of suicide bombers)
Inspections not working (inspections were supposed to verify disposal of weapons not be a treasure hunt)
No hope that time would fix problem (Succeeded by Uday or Qusay)

Well, I guess I’m short of 15. Read _The Threatening Storm_ for more.

Thanks for the reasons. Human rignts seems to be a rationale given by many on the right to try to justfy a war to the left. Why do you think it takes so long for our country to address human rights abuses when no economic advantage is present?
I find it interesting that in your reasons for going into Iran and Syria you have included support for terrorists in Iraq. If there had been no Iraq would you have included support for terrorists elsewhere?