A TRUE October Surprise?

What’s most surprising about this story of Bush incompetence in not guarding weapons in Iraq, summarized here by dog run member Josh Marshall (via Julia writing in The American Street where you can read some of my own musings about our legal system on Mondays, along with a nice smattering of some of the best damned writers in blogdom…) is not that it took so long to come out at all, but that the Bushmen couldn’t suppress it completely with just over a week to go until the election.
The story, of course, is of over just how 350 tons of incredibly powerful explosive that “disappeared” from a facility kept under close watch by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA, the agency headed by Mohammed El-Baradei, and one of the agencies tossed out of Iraq so Dubya could show the world that his was bigger than Papa Bush’s). The IAEA did not remove the weapons grade explosives because, although they are really nasty and can be used as the triggering mechanism in atomic bombs, they also have useful and legitimate civilian applications in excavations for dams and bridges and other large problems. So… they were kept under close watch by the IAEA.
Until, of course, the United States military moved in, and threw out the inspectors, and apparently, not only left a facility at al Qa Qaa, Iraq (I think that’s the name) unguarded, but then suppressed all information about having left it unguarded, apparently under pain of death for any American or Iraqi who dared talk about it. Result: over 350 tons of the nastiest conventional explosives on Earth went right into the hands of terrorists, and, as alluded to by Senator Kerry in the debates, are being used for car bombs and other devices used to kill our soldiers and the nascent Iraqi security force, as well as lotsa civilians. Got it? (We won’t even talk about the possibility of even nastier weapons at these facilities also having disappeared… into the hands of terrorists.)
Our government’s justification is that there were so many explosives floating around Iraq from other places, they couldn’t guard them all– so what difference does it make if they didn’t gaurd any. Got that? This is our “strong, decisive, resolved” government. We went into Iraq to keep bad shit out of the hands of terrorists, and by our actions, not only placed them IN the hands of terrorists, but deliberately suppressed any and all information on the subject, thereby ensuring that the situation couldn’t be corrected.
The only thing that amazes me is that this story came out at all; the Bushmen had done an excellent job suppressing it for so long. We’re 8 days from the election, for Gawd sake. If there ARE any undecideds left, this should make up their mind for them.

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