by TChris

The Pentagon's first explanation for the missing explosives at Al QaQaa -- that Iraq shipped them to Syria before the U.S. invasion -- became untenable after a news video surfaced showing that the explosives were in place, bearing U.N. seals, after the occupation began. Now the Pentagon has produced Maj. Austin Pearson to explain that his troops removed 250 tons of munitions from Al QaQaa on April 13, 2003 -- none of which carried U.N. seals. But the news video, taken five days later, shows the now-missing HMX, complete with seals, and Pearson admits that his unit didn't haul away any HMX.

Pearson said his team did not go into bunkers bearing seals, and his appearance, arranged by the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, did little to answer how such a large amount of explosive could have disappeared from a site that may well have been under U.S. military control.

The Pentagon says that Pearson's story shows that the Pentagon had a well conceived plan to destroy Iraq's arsenal. The facts, however, can't sustain the spin.

A number of government officials and weapons experts involved in the postwar weapons search have been sharply critical of the U.S. effort to find and secure material that was considered part of Iraq's massive weapons production program. They say that important, well-known Iraqi weapons sites were subject to only cursory searches as the U.S. invasion force thrust north toward Baghdad and then left largely unguarded.

A must read today....Bob Herbert in the New York Times, Letting Down the Troops.

We have not done right by the troops we've sent to Iraq to fight this crazy, awful war....The thing to always keep in mind about our troops in Iraq is that they were sent to fight the wrong war. America's clearly defined and unmistakable enemy, Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, was in Afghanistan. So the men and women fighting and dying in Iraq were thrown into a pointless, wholly unnecessary conflict.

This has been a war run by amateurs and incompetents. Whatever anyone has felt about the merits of the war, there is no excuse for preparing so poorly and for failing to see, at a minimum, that the troops were properly trained and equipped.

New figures are out for the total number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq:

As of Thursday, Oct. 28, 2004, at least 1,111 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. At least 847 died as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department.

The AP count is five higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Thursday at 10 a.m. EDT.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 973 U.S. military members have died, according to AP's count. That includes at least 738 deaths resulting from hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

Rudy Giuliani on the Today Show this morning, 7:15 am:

Giuliani: "The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"

Update: Rudy realizes he stuck his foot in his mouth and responds, claiming his words were taken out of context? Sorry, we watched the video. They were about as in context as you can get.

The New York Times takes President Bush to task for his failure to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But at the end, it inexplicably gives him another chance:

When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal first broke, the Bush administration struck a pose of righteous indignation. It assured the world that the problem was limited to one block of one prison, that the United States would never condone the atrocities we saw in those terrible photos, that it would punish those responsible for any abuse - regardless of their rank - and that it was committed to defending the Geneva Conventions and the rights of prisoners. None of this appears to be true.

After citing numerous examples of those who have not been held accountable, the Times moves on to Bush's secret creation of a "parallel and unconsitutional judicial universe" at Guantanamo.

The White House was so determined to suspend the normal rights and processes for the hundreds of men captured in Afghanistan - none of them important members of Al Qaeda and most of them no threat at all - that it hid the details from Secretary of State Colin Powell and never bothered to consult Congress.

From there the Times recounts recent revelations of the Administration's transporting prisoners out of Iraq and hiding them from the Red Cross.

The Associated Press is reporting there may be a showdown in Iraqsoon

An uptick in airstrikes and other military moves point to an imminent showdown between U.S. forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad -- a decisive battle that could determine whether the campaign to bring democracy and stability to Iraq can succeed.

After providing facts to support the showdown conclusion, the AP continues:

A series of policy mistakes by the U.S. military and the Bush administration have transformed Fallujah from a shabby, dusty backwater known regionally for mosques and tasty kebabs into a symbol of Arab pride and defiance of the United States throughout the Islamic world. (our emphasis)

A videotape obtained Tuesday by Associated Press Television News featured a warning by masked gunmen that if Fallujah is subjected to an all-out assault, they will strike "with weapons and military tactics" that the Americans and their allies "have not experienced before."

It's interesting that the AP's interpretation of Bush's policies are stated factually to be mistakes. There seems to be no other plausible explanation.

Bush wants us to believe the 350 ton weapons cache "may" have gone missing from al Qa Qaa before U.S. troops arrived. An Iraqi official responds that is an impossible scenario:

A top Iraqi science official said it was impossible that 350 tonnes of high explosives could have been smuggled out of a military site south of Baghdad before the regime fell last year.

The official is Mohammed al-Sharaa, head of the science ministry's site monitoring department. He worked with UN weapons inspectors while Saddam was in power.

The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of."

Sharaa also warned that other nearby sites with similar materials could have also been plundered. "The Al-Milad Company in Iskandariyah and the Yarmouk and Hateen facilities contained explosive materials that could have also been taken out," the official told AFP in an interview.

Who's in charge of the area now? It doesn't sound like we are.

The area in Babil province...is now one of the most dangerous parts of the country rife with crime, kidnappings and attacks. Several headless bodies hav been found in the area, according to marines stationed there.

It may be already too late to salvage many of these sites, which are controlled by bandits and beyond the control of Iraqi forces," warned Sharaa.

The Independent has some startling new allegations about Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq:

Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday.

The plans were revealed during the court martial of L/Cpl Ian Blaymire, 23, from Leeds, who is charged with the manslaughter of a comrade while serving in Iraq. Sgt John Nightingale, 32, a reservist from Guiseley, West Yorkshire, died after being shot in the chest on 23 September last year.

The court, at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, heard that contingency plans were drawn up by Lt Col Christopher Warren, staff officer at Land Command, Salisbury, Wiltshire, who was responsible for operational training.

Lt Col Warren said US planners had passed on dates for which the invasion was planned. The hearing was told Army chiefs wanted the training for the Army to start at the beginning of December 2002. However, due to "sensitivities" the training was delayed.

The Bush Administration is busy re-writing policy on rights to be accorded prisoners apprehended in Iraq:

A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said.

They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

The new rule was crafted after this weekend's revelation that the U.S., at the behest of the C.I.A., secretly transported prisoners out Iraq and hid them from the Red Cross, notwithstanding a provision in the Geneva Conventions prohibiting protected civilians from being deported from occupied territories.

Update: The New York Times says Bush is making things worse:

"The disastrous theft was revealed in a recent letter to an international agency in Vienna. It was signed by the general director of Iraq's Planning and Following Up Directorate. It's too bad the Bush administration doesn't have one of those."

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Original Post

Here go the wingers again, claiming an NBC story shows that the weapons at al Qa Qa were gone 18 months before we invaded Iraq, ergo, it's not Bush's fault. The Washington Post reports:

The Bush campaign pushed reporters to look into an NBC News report that the network had been embedded with troops who searched the site three weeks into the war but never found the powerful explosives that are now missing, suggesting they were already gone.

Don't buy a word. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saw the weapons in January, 2003:

IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers, Fleming said. Inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.

It's Karl Rove who's trying to manipulate the facts:

by TChris

Bunnatine H. Greenhouse is the top civilian employee of the Army Corps of Engineers with oversight authority over contracting. She's raising questions about the Bush administration's cozy relationship with Halliburton, including its repeated decisions not to seek competitive bids for contracts awarded to the Vice President's former employer.

Greenhouse said that in at least one case she witnessed, Army officials inappropriately allowed representatives of Halliburton to sit in as they discussed the terms of a contract the company was set to receive.

The administration would prefer that she follow the course of "don't ask, don't tell." But that's not her job -- and because she's doing her job, her job may be on the line.

In an Oct. 21 letter to the acting Army secretary, Ms. Greenhouse said that after her repeated questions about the Halliburton contracts, she was excluded from major decisions to award money and that her job status was threatened.

Greenhouse is seeking a high level investigation of threats to the "integrity of the federal contracting program." After her concerns were made public, the Army Corps of Engineers was wisely directed "to suspend any adverse personnel actions" against her.

The Bush Administration has some explaining to do. How is it that after we invaded Iraq and took control, 380 tons of potent conventional explosives disappear?

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.

....The explosives missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe. The Iraqi letter identified the vanished stockpile as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, which stands for "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, which stands for "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, which stands for "pentaerythritol tetranitrate." The total is roughly 340 metric tons or nearly 380 American tons.

This is a big deal.