Burnt Orange Report

380 Tons of Explosive Disappear in Iraq

By Andrew Dobbs

That's right, 380 tons of powerful explosives were sitting in a pile in Iraq. We knew they were there and yet we did nothing to secure them and now they are gone. From CNN.com:

Some 380 tons of explosives powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog says.

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN the interim Iraqi government reported several days ago that the explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa complex, south of Baghdad.

The explosives -- considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads -- were under IAEA control until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. IAEA workers left the country before the fighting began.

"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong hands they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the bombings that we've seen," Fleming said.

She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the most well-known storage sites. Besides the 380 tons, there were large caches of artillery there.

Fleming said the IAEA does not know whether some of the explosives may have been used in past attacks.

The multinational force in Iraq and the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group have been ordered to "look into" the disappearance of the explosives, a senior Pentagon official said.

Just FYI, the same type of explosives that went missing were used in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Scotland in 1989. The bomb that tore that plane to shreds used 1 pound of these explosives. The Bush Administration's understaffing and mismanagement of this war (which I support in spite of Bush's mishandling) has handed 760,000 pounds of the same stuff to terrorists.

I shudder to think of what will happen after 4 additional years of this kind of incompetence.