It’s been a while, but I seem to recall that the military engaged in some lightning strikes to secure oil facilities early in the war. Special forces were engaged in secret missions throughout Iraq. Some oil wells WERE set on fire, but rapid response put them out. Saddam’s communications were disrupted rapidly from ‘shock and awe’, which paralized his entire command and control.
Maybe I’m wrong, since I’m operating from memory here, but why do you assume that Saddam didn’t try to set his oil wells on fire? Or try to blow his dams?
These weren’t just “explosives,” but in fact nuclear grade HE that were put under seal by the IAEA. While one can throw up their hands and go “hey, a little HE explosive here, a little there, who’s counting?” this seems pretty amusing coming from someone who not too long ago was a finger-wagging stickler for weapons containment and holding people accountable to their international obligations to secure dangerous weapons.
It’s only misleading to focus on these particular explosives insofar as it fails to give people a picture of just how widespread these sorts of incidents were, how many times unknown looters took incredibly dangerous materials that had previously been secure, under guard, and under seal and carted them off to heaven knows where. The net result is that all sorts of dangerous materials were dispersed far and wide, where before they had been contained. And if you don’t think failing to plan for that potential result is an incredibly foolish oversight of any “security” policy, then you are just plain lying to yourself.
Oh, Lord love a duck! Fine! Let’s just grant that, that Saddam was determined to wreak havoc on his own country in a Hitlerian fit of pique, and was restrained only by the firm leadership and prescient wisdom of GeeDubya (Praise the Leader!)
Lets open the Presidential Ledger at make an entry on the “Good!” page…hmmmmm…“catastrophic success”…no…hamfisted diplomacy…no…economy hellbound, via handbasket…no… well, its gotta be there somewhere.
Not that there aren’t legitimate objections as well as useless ones that you mention, but- True dat.
Perhaps, as you suggest, our efforts to control access to military explosives were misguided.
Perhaps, though, limiting the availability to explosives is a good idea.
In any case, the fact that professional terrorists can purchase and smuggle explosives across borders seems irrelevant to leaving hundreds of thousands of tons of easily accessible explosives undguarded.
This vast sea of unguarded explosives made munitions available to even the average Iraqi Ali Sixpack with a grudge and a hair up his butt.
Which is a beautiful segue to your next point
Plenty of Iraqis residing in their “‘residential’ homes” (as you put it) may have gotten a hair up their butt.
I find this claim to be very dubious; however, I doubt you have a citation for it.
Personally, I think that the capabilities of our men and women in uniform are greater than you give them credit for inthis instance. But, alas, I have no citation either- only my faith in the ability of the US military personel.
Another question (in addition to the original question you raise about the wisdom of devoting any resources to securing the hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions) is whether or not they could have secured at least the major sites that were well known.
And if not all of those at least maybe “**the main high explosives storage facility in Iraq**.”
Seeing how much grief you’re taking over this, let me discuss the issue further.
I think that the planner do deserve credit for what they did get right. The efforts are worthy of praise. It’s good that catastrophes that were prevented.
Exactly. And our plan for controlling these weapons when we invaded was…?
I shouldn’t have to be reminding you, Sam, that Saddam was a dictator. You think there were explosives in every neighborhood when he was still in charge? Of course not; somebody could’ve used them against his regime So where did the insurgents get the explosives? From the frickin’ munitions dumps, of course. Al-Qaqaa seems to have been the biggest and baddest of them, but there were lots more; how many did we know about before invading, and how many did we actually try to secure when we first got to them? Given that we didn’t bother securing al-Qaqaa, I expect the latter figure is a nice, round number.
Up to a point, I’d have to agree with you, Simon. But IMHO, the planners should have had the sense to see just how many catastrophes they might have to forestall, and just how few troops they had available to forestall them with. There comes a point at which it makes more sense just to not go in at all - especially when that prevents pretty much all the potential catastrophes in one fell swoop.
Hell, never mind keeping them out of the hands of insurgents and other enemies! How about just keeping them out of the hands of rowdy teenagers? Keeping them out of the hands of the feeble-minded, who might inadvisedly use them to harvest the flowers to strew in our path? Howzabout because we don’t want them in anybody’s hands?
Am I the only person who, after reading the last few posts by Sam Stone, comes to he conclusion that sam will say anything that will get Bush re-elected?
Looting it ourselves? Isn’t it possible that Halliburton or even this administration wants a whole bunch of the stuff without the IAEA knowing about it?
As Josh Marshall points out, the Republican denials about this story are particularly bizarre given that it shouldn’t be in the least bit surprising that this happened. It was happening everywhere, to all sorts of sensitive sites post-invasion, especially nuke facilities.
In fact, it seemed like many Republicans were open in admitting it… up until the point Kerry made it a campaign issue, after which it suddenly, magically, became unbelievable and unlikely again. Same with Tora Bora. We have the government and Bush people basically talking openly about how Osama was almost certainly there and that we miscalculated by letting him get away due to too few troops (there may have been, by some hyperbole, more reporters than US troops there) in 2002 and even 2003. Then Kerry points that out, and suddenly it’s all crazy talk.
That crosses the line from intellectual dishonesty to a realm of near insanity.
Golly gee willikers, now I can sleep soundly at night, and don’t have to worry about the other 379.99 tons of explosives that are still rattling around loose out there…
