# Al Qaqaa: where the roadside bombs come from **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 25, 2004, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023 "2004-10-25T09:43:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/141 "2004-10-27T04:27:57Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > …He’s starting to look opportunistic. The minute the public decides that he’s happier when things get worse in Iraq, he’s going to lose a lot of support. Oh, no worry there, **Sam**. The suggestion that Kerry is so loathesome and vile as to celebrate gleefully the suffering inflicted on our soldiers… well, that would be reprehensible, now wouldn’t it? What kind of creep would make such an insinuation? ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/142 "2004-10-27T04:49:53Z")
> [@](#): > > [Explosives were looted after Iraq invasion](http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/10/26/explosives_were_looted_after_iraq_invasion?mode=PF) > UN nuclear official cites security lapse > > By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | October 26, 2004 > > WASHINGTON – Iraqi officials reported that thieves looted 377 tons of powerful explosives from an unguarded site after the US-led invasion last year, the top UN nuclear official said yesterday. And a former weapons inspector said he had counted about 100 other unguarded weapons sites that may have been stripped of munitions for use in the wave of attacks against US soldiers and Iraqi civilians. > \ > > ''This is not just any old warehouse in Iraq that happened to have explosives in it; this was a leading location for developing nuclear weapons before the first Gulf War," said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project, a nonprofit organization that has followed Iraq’s attempts to procure weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade. ''The fact that it had been left unsecured is very, very discouraging. It would be like invading the US in to order to get rid of and not securing Los Alamos or Livermore ." > … > > \*\*’'The military did not view guarding these sites as their responsibility," David Kay said, recalling that he witnessed US troops guarding the gates of the Tuwaitha nuclear facility while Iraq civilians carried away radioactive pipes and metal drums through other exits. > > ''There just were not enough troops to guard the number of sites. It was just crazy." > > At the time, there was no major insurgency and US military officials felt the war had been won, Kay said, so the Department of Defense did not fear that the weapons that disappeared in widespread looting would be used against US soldiers. > …\*\* > [@Sam Stone](#): > > First, is it possible that the military screwed up? I suppose. But it stretches the imagination to believe that a bunch of **terrorists** … At this point, they were only insurgents-to-be. There weren’t any terrorists in Saddam-controlled Iraq. > [@Magiver](#): > > Former Congressman Goss’s opinion is reflective of Kerry’s position and not that of the GOP. Unless he is running for president, his position on the matter is purely his own. **His appointment to Director of the CIA is the result of his years in Congress combined with a background in both the CIA and the military.** Bzzzt. He [said himself](http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=128) he wasn’t qualified. He was partisan and would do anything Bush asked him to do. > [@](#): > > [Congress says CIA is withholding report critical of 9/11 handling](http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=1143) > > Oct 21 - Members of Congress are demanding the Central Intelligence Agency release the results of an internal investigation into the Agency’s activities leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. An “intelligence official who has read the report” told the LA Times under condition of anonymity that “the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration because it makes it look like they weren’t interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward.” > > … > > Though a draft of the report was finished in July, its release to Congress has been delayed. The New York Times reports that John McLaughlin, who was serving as the CIA’s acting director, requested clarification on certain aspects of the inspector general’s findings, thereby postponing the final version. \*\*In spite of requests from Congress that the CIA deliver the report, Peter Goss, the agency’s new director has still not complied. \*\* > … > [@](#): > > [Rumors of firings fly upon Goss’ CIA arrival](http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/nation/9995878.htm?1c) > > Porter Goss’ initial moves as CIA director appear to herald a post-election purge at the already troubled spy agency, according to current and former top U.S. intelligence officials. > > Goss, a former Republican congressman, **has put at least four former Capitol Hill Republican staffers into top positions** in his CIA office and has given them broad authority to make personnel and restructuring decisions, the current and former intelligence officials said. > > One of the aides, whose identity Knight Ridder is not disclosing because he served under cover, has been “going around telling people they are to **fire 80 to 90 people** ” in the Directorate of Operations, the CIA’s covert arm, according to a former official. > > His account was repeated by several knowledgeable current and former officials who maintain close ties to the agency. > … ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/143 "2004-10-27T05:17:25Z")
This story is going to fizzle. The fact is, no one knows when the stuff was removed. I’d be very surprised to hear Kerry talking about this by the end of the week. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/144 "2004-10-27T06:04:50Z")
And now it looks like CBS wanted to break this (non)story on election eve (Minus exculpatory evidence, of course.). Gosh, why is that?, I wonder… ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/145 "2004-10-27T07:06:42Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > And now it looks like CBS wanted to break this (non)story on election eve (Minus exculpatory evidence, of course.). Gosh, why is that?, I wonder… So what? Does that make it any less legitimate? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/146 "2004-10-27T07:30:06Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > And now it looks like CBS wanted to break this (non)story on election eve (Minus exculpatory evidence, of course.). Gosh, why is that?, I wonder… And what “exculpatory evidence” would that be, **Brutus**? Gosh, I wonder… ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/147 "2004-10-27T08:49:53Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > And now it looks like CBS wanted to break this (non)story on election eve (Minus exculpatory evidence, of course.). Gosh, why is that?, I wonder… I don’t understand how this FUBAR can possibly be a non story. Please enlighten me. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/148 "2004-10-27T11:12:58Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > I don’t understand how this FUBAR can possibly be a non story. Please enlighten me. Why, **Louis** , it’s obviously a non-story because it’s critical of Glorious Leader, so it’s obviously untrue. Thus, a non-story. See? It’s so simple when you turn your brain off… ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/149 "2004-10-27T12:21:08Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Even if the place was ‘unsecured’, you can be damned sure that the American military was maintaining 24/7 surveillance of the area by air, satellite, radar, you name it. Did we only get that surveillance stuff working after we were in control of the area? Somehow, I was under the impression we were doing surveillance even before the war. In fact, do you have any evidence that the surveillance was tighter once we were in control than before? > [@](#): > > Kerry’s trying to turn this into an indictment of Bush’s handling of the war, when Bush had nothing to do with it, even if it happened the way they are claiming. Good point…The fact that Bush pursued a policy to make it less likely that WMD and other related materials would get into the hands of terrorists and that this policy actually did exactly the opposite, how can we possibly blame this on him? And, it is not like there were any of us before the war who were worried about this being the case…I mean who could have possibly predicted it!!! :rolleyes: > [@](#): > > Oh, and there’s a third thing; If this revelation came from a letter written by el-Baradei, whom the U.S. is working to remove from his office, then what we may have here is an intentional act by a U.N. diplomat to influence a U.S. election. That’s a pretty serious matter - one that should be investigated. Yeah, we shouldn’t allow people to report truthful things. That ought to be illegal. Oh, and the original letter was written by the Iraqi provisional government. Do you want to go after them too? > [@](#): > > And on a final, political note, John Kerry is going to run a serious risk of blowback if he goes after Bush on this one. He’s starting to look opportunistic. The minute the public decides that he’s happier when things get worse in Iraq, he’s going to lose a lot of support. I am proud to say that I predicted that Bush-supporters might get craven enough to use the “thinking / hoping for bad things” defense but I really hoped they wouldn’t get that desperate. This is now the second use of this defense in the last few days. So, let me inform you of something, **Sam**. Even if Kerry were to get a perverse pleasure out of things in Iraq getting this fucked up (and given that Kerry is going to have to deal with this mess he’d have to be a freakin’ masochist for that to be the case), John Kerry does not have magical powers…His thinking (or the thinking of others of us who think this administration gives incompetence a bad name) does not make things happen. This might come as news to you, but what makes things happen is the ineptness of the policies of the current administration. That is, **actions make things happen, not thoughts**. So quit trying to distract everybody from how screwed up the actions have been by saying that it appears that John Kerry thinks bad thoughts! ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/150 "2004-10-27T12:29:12Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > That is, **actions make things happen, not thoughts**. So quit trying to distract everybody from how screwed up the actions have been by saying that it appears that John Kerry thinks bad thoughts! Nonsense JShore. 😉 It’s a well-known fact that everytime someone says a harsh word about Glorious Leader a fairy dies and Baby Jesus cries. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/151 "2004-10-27T13:56:16Z")
[This story](http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/world/9849036.htm) was originally in the Chicago Tribune - dated September 30, according to Josh Marshall. So it’s not like the SCLM was saving this for the last minute; it just didn’t break through the clutter. It apparently took the IAEA’s ringing the alarm bell to do the trick. (Maybe the IAEA is secretly working for Kerry. But wait a second, they had nothing to act on until they got the word from Allawi’s government in Iraq. Maybe Allawi’s secretly for Kerry.) Besides, the Bush Administration had to know about this story before the SCLM did; they could have at any time prevented the SCLM from saving this story for the last minute. Maybe the Bush Administration’s secretly for Kerry. :rolleyes: > [@](#): > > Away from the spotlight of insurgent uprisings in Fallujah, Ramadi and Baghdad, Latifiyah has quietly become a lawless, lethal thorn in the side of U.S. troops here. Local police have fled or been killed, leaving the town in the hands of Islamic insurgents, kidnappers and common thugs, military officials said. To stress that point, insurgents blew up the police station two weeks ago. > > The streets around Latifiyah have become so laced with roadside bombs - known in military parlance as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs - that military officials here call it the “IED capital of Iraq.” > > \ > > **The insurgents probably are using weapons and ammunition looted from the nearby Qa-Qaa complex** , a 3-mile by 3-mile weapons-storage facility about 25 miles southwest of Baghdad, said Maj. Brian Neil, operations officer for the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, which initially patrolled the area. > > The facility was bombed during last year’s invasion **and then left unguarded** , Neil said. “There’s definitely no shortage of weapons around here,” he said. So that seems to answer the question of whether this stuff is actually being used against our troops. Shit. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/152 "2004-10-27T14:16:27Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Shit. “Oh, come on. People are fungible. You can have them here or there. The fact of the matter is, we’ve made a judgment and we’ve announced the judgment. It’s very clear. You understand it” -[Rumsfeld](http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20040416-03.html) ---
**Author:** ![Mal\_Adroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@Mal\_Adroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mal_Adroit)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/153 "2004-10-27T14:25:57Z")
Wow. Great cite, **RT.** ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/154 "2004-10-27T15:21:03Z")
> [@](#): > > The insurgents probably are using weapons and ammunition looted from the nearby Qa-Qaa complex > [@RTFirefly](#): > > So that seems to answer the question of whether this stuff is actually being used against our troops. I don’t mean to be flip, but so what? And since when does “probably” mean “definitely”? Lots of S.H. era weapons are being used against our troops. There’s nothing particularly special about these weapons except that they’re in the news now. The fact reamains that no one knows what happened to these weapons. On a related note, I hear a lot in the news about the “UN seals” that were put on the bunkers. Does anyone know what these seals consist of and how difficult it would be for someone to duplicate them if they wanted to? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/155 "2004-10-27T16:33:29Z")
> [@](#): > > “Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, ‘we do not know the facts.’” -[The man who told us he absitively, posolutely _knew_ Saddam had weapons of mass destruction](http://www.columbiabasinherald.com/articles/2004/10/26/ap/headlines/d85vsb780.txt) that posed a ‘grave and gathering danger’ to the US. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/156 "2004-10-27T16:43:38Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > I don’t mean to be flip, but so what? And since when does “probably” mean “definitely”? Lots of S.H. era weapons are being used against our troops. There’s nothing particularly special about these weapons except that they’re in the news now. The fact reamains that no one knows what happened to these weapons. To quote [Weirddave](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=3560442&postcount=43), of all people, “nobody blames you for missing a little piece of bullshit when you’re waste deep in the stuff.” And that seems to be the argument being advanced here: don’t blame the architects of the war plan because they didn’t secure this particular site; _there were a whole bunch of weapons caches just like it that they didn’t have the troops to secure._ So don’t pay it no never mind; we’re fucked far beyond the ability of this one weapons stash to make a difference. Pardon me if I don’t find that particularly comforting. I’ve already raised the point that we didn’t have enough troops to keep potential in-country opponents from getting their hands on a shitload of weapons that they could easily use against us. As a result, there is no way we (or any new Iraqi government) can achieve a state monopoly on violence. Hence, the occupation was FUBAR from the start. There are reasons why talking about this site all by itself is worthwhile, though: 1. Even if we’d secured every other weapons cache in Iraq, failing to secure this one would have kept the resistance alive for years all by itself. There was enough juice here for a few thousand OKC bombings, or a quarter of a million roadside bombs, or some mixture of the two. 2. We clearly knew about this particular weapons cache in advance of the war. The IAEA told us about how much conventional bang was there, and it was on our list of suspected WMD sites. One can argue about whether we should have been able to guard a whole bunch of conventional weapons depots that we didn’t have advance intelligence about, but surely we were aware of the need to secure weapons that could be used against our forces after Baghdad fell. (If not, our leaders believed their own propaganda about how we would be welcomed as liberators - and that’s far worse.) So we should have allocated the troops to secure the major conventional-weapons sites we knew about, and this was one of those. 3. The lies and evasions of the Bush Administration are in plain view here: “We didn’t know this site might’ve been looted until just the other day.” “Kerry’s blaming our troops for this.” And so forth. Anyway, as I’ve been saying since May 2003, paraphrasing the 1992 Clinton campaign: “it’s the war plan, stupid.” It’s the failure of the war plan to be efficacious for doing anything beyond toppling Saddam that’s the fundamental scandal here. We didn’t have enough troops to guard suspected WMD sites; we didn’t have enough troops to guard major conventional weapons caches; we didn’t have enough troops to keep Iraq’s infrastructure and government records from being looted; we didn’t have enough troops to properly run our prisons in Iraq - one of the factors that led to Abu Ghraib; we didn’t have enough troops to deal with an insurgency; we didn’t have enough troops for anything but defeating Saddam’s conventional army. And because we didn’t have enough troops: 1. Iraq lacks civil order. 2. Iraq is awash in conventional weapons. 3. If Iraq had had WMDs, they’d be in the hands of terrorists by now. Like I’ve been saying since last May, we should thank our lucky stars that Bush was surely lying about the WMDs. Because if he was telling the truth, the failure of his war plan to be anything approaching sufficient for securing potential WMD sites, and Bush’s postwar lack of concern about our failure to have done so, would in my mind constitute the highest level of treason and betrayal. Consciously or not, he’d be doing the work of an al-Qaeda mole in the Oval Office. And his failure, and his lack of concern about his failure to guard these enormous conventional weapons depots from unfriendly hands, constitutes a terrible betrayal of our men and women in uniform. Our troops know they’re putting their lives on the line when they go to war. But they have the right to expect that our leaders have done their reasonable best to minimize the risks to their life and limb as they fight our wars for us. The failure of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. to even come close to doing so should earn them our everlasting anger. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/157 "2004-10-27T17:28:09Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > Why, **Louis** , it’s obviously a non-story because it’s critical of Glorious Leader, so it’s obviously untrue. Thus, a non-story. See? It’s so simple when you turn your brain off… Oh, yeah, I got it now. > [@](#): > > Oh, and there’s a third thing; If this revelation came from a letter written by el-Baradei, whom the U.S. is working to remove from his office, then **what we may have here is an intentional act** by a U.N. diplomat **to influence a U.S. election. That’s a pretty serious matter - one that should be investigated**. (bolding mine) Aren’t various and sundry church groups attempting to influence a U.S. election? Why not investigate them? Personally, I believe any and all church groups should keep their damn mouths shut—I’m more concerned about some of them than I am some U.N. person. ---
**Author:** ![Monocracy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monocracy/32/4493_2.png) [@Monocracy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monocracy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/158 "2004-10-27T18:55:04Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > First, is it possible that the military screwed up? I suppose. But it stretches the imagination to believe that a bunch of terrorists could sneak into an occupied area with 22 semi trucks, load up (how long would THAT take? Days? Weeks?), then drive back out of the area undetected. Even if the place was ‘unsecured’, you can be damned sure that the American military was maintaining 24/7 surveillance of the area by air, satellite, radar, you name it. 22 tractor-trailer units is bigger than five tank platoons, and the military isn’t about to let five tank platoons roam around behind the lines. First of all, unless the 380 tons isn’t the 2000 lb./each kind, then it would only take 18 semi 18-wheelers to carry the load, which legally in most of the U.S. can carry approximately 43,500 lbs. cargo. A 22-wheeler can carry even more weight. And that’s just the legal limit, they could carry as much weight as the trucks and roads could handle. I’m not sure how the facility is set up, but in the best case scenario, with palletized loads, fork trucks, and a loading dock, one person could load one truck in less than an hour. Even without this set-up, just bring in a bunch of pallets and a couple of fork trucks on the first truck, set up a make-shift loading dock, then begin palletizing the munitions and loading them. An average warehouse crew in America can pick, palletize, and load over a dozen tractor trailers, over 200 tons of product, in eight hours. Additionally, over the road sand and gravel haulers could have been used instead. With 10 or 14 wheels, and much shorter in length, they could carry as much as could be crammed into the bed. Furthermore, your scenario makes a lot of assumptions. You assumed that only one group of people did the looting. You assumed that they looted everything at once. You assumed that the trucks would all travel together in a large convoy. No one knows exactly what all the facts are, but those assumptions seem pretty far-fetched. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/159 "2004-10-27T19:19:09Z")
**Sam Stone:** _And on a final, political note, John Kerry is going to run a serious risk of blowback if he goes after Bush on this one. He’s starting to look opportunistic. The minute the public decides that he’s happier when things get worse in Iraq, he’s going to lose a lot of support._ I’m not so sure. After all, would you rather put up with an opportunistic President or a massively incompetent one? If the planners of this war, **which was launched with the explicitly stated goal of preventing Iraqi weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists** , actually managed inadvertently to **facilitate** Iraqi weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, I don’t see how Bush can come out of it looking anything but massively incompetent. A little bit of “nyah-nyahing” on the part of Kerry is pretty trivial by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2004, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023/160 "2004-10-27T20:53:51Z")
> [@](#): > > [Bush:](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/10/20041027-5.html) A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander-in-Chief. That was already a chuckle even without any commentary. But Gen. Wesley Clark stepped to the plate and [knocked that softball clear out of sight:](http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/10/statement-from-wesley-clark.html) > [@](#): > > Today George W. Bush made a very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected. In his own words, he told the American people that “…a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander in Chief. > > President Bush couldn’t be more right. He jumped to conclusions about any connection between Saddam Hussein and 911. He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. He jumped to conclusions about the mission being accomplished. He jumped to conclusions about how we had enough troops on the ground to win the peace. And because he jumped to conclusions, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq may very well have their hands on powerful explosives to attack our troops, we are stuck in Iraq without a plan to win the peace, and Americans are less safe both at home and abroad. > > By doing all these things, he broke faith with our men and women in uniform. He has let them down. George W. Bush is unfit to be our Commander in Chief. You tell 'em, Wes! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-qaqaa-where-the-roadside-bombs-come-from/271023.md?page=9)