Unsecured IRANIAN munitions? Hmmm

We couldn't do everything...there were oil fields and pipelines to protect.

No doubt about it, Bush and Cheney are guilty of manslaughter and so is Rumsfeld.

I guess the military was too busy inspecting those "known" sites of massive stockpiles of . . . uh, never mind.

No, they were too busy guarding Iraq's antiquities . . . uh, never mind.

Wait, they were too busy going after the real terrorists in Afghani . . . uh, never mind.

Too busy trying to get body and vehicle armor for . . . uh, never mind.

Too busy trying to secure no-bid contracts for Halliburton - yeah, that's it!

I just knew that we'd come up with the answer if we thought about it long enough!

Unsecured munitions don't kill people, Iranian infiltrators do.

I have a dim recollection of an alliance between Iraq and the USA during the 1980s (when Iraq and Iran were fighting each other). We provided untold munitions then, as well as the infrastructure to manufacture said goodies.

Our troops are being killed by literal "blowback."

Our president was so thrilled to watch our military race across the desert 4 years ago that he neglected to realize HOW MUCH stuff (of a rather conventional sort, mind you) SH had accumulated and stashed all over the place.

When we shocked and awed with precision bombs, bandits were helping themselves to the biggest explosives bonanza in history.

Ye reap what ye sow....

les: Unsecured munitions don't kill people, Iranian infiltrators do.

Unarmed Iranian infiltrators, even if they exist, kill no one.

And exactly where is your evidence of such infiltration?

Oh, never mind. You don't have any, of course.

Just like you didn't have any evidence of massive stockpiles of WMDs.

And no evidence of Iraqi involvement with 9/11.

And no evidence of Iraqi and al Queda linkages.

But, then, conservatives have never let a lack of evidence stop them.

And when evidence exists in spades about their own criminality, poof, evidence becomes irrelevant again!

OTOH, I thought the conservative meme was that Iran was shipping weapons into Iraq, not people.

I guess when that story fell through, you had to come up with something else, eh?

That's f'd up. The Bush administration was really foolish by waging this war for profit instead of for right reasons.

OT
Check out new posts on my blog here and here.

I've been trying to point this out for years. I remember seeing news reports during the initial ground invasion, Iraqi citizens complained that Saddam set up huge stockpiles of weapons and explosives in civilian areas, schools, homes, etc. and they couldn't get US troops to haul them away or even guard them. Then later, they complained that the weapons caches were constantly being raided by other Iraqis and anyone could haul away as many free weapons as they could carry.
This was Saddam's final victory over the US invasion. He knew he couldn't win a head-on battle, but he knew that if he dispersed weapon caches throughout the country, he would enable an insurgency that the US could never defeat.

Over 300 tons of RDX vanished from a single site in Iraq.

Pan Am 103 was blown up using only half a pound of RDX.

charlie don't surf: He knew he couldn't win a head-on battle, but he knew that if he dispersed weapon caches throughout the country, he would enable an insurgency that the US could never defeat.

Bush enabled the insurgency by invading in the first place, by not committing enough troops in the second place, and in third place is his failure to plan for the post major combat operations as George W Bush defines major combat operations period.

A senior British Army officer on Friday accused Iranian agents of paying Iraqi militia to carry out attacks on coalition forces around Basra.

So, let's get this straight.

The wingers first story was that Iran was supplying weapons to the Iraqi insurgents, even though the insurgents using the alleged Iranian weapons are hostile to Iran (sorta like the alleged links between the mutually hostile Saddam and al Queda), but that didn't pan out, because the Bush adminstration was caught lying about the evidence when either didn't exist or was so weak as to constitute nothing.

Then the wingers claimed that Iranians were actually infiltrating Iraq to fight against "coalition" forces, but they can't provide any evidence to back up that claim.

Now a third story emerges, the Iranians are funding the militias, but apparently neither joining them nor supplying them with arms.

Hey, what's next wingers?

Or have you finally hit upon a lie that will be hard enough to crack that it will last a few days longer than the others?

We may not have secured all those weapons stockpiles, and we may not have secured the national museum with all of its historic treasures, but we did secure the oil ministry, rather quickly in fact. We had our priorities and we committed enough forces to secure the important areas. That can't be right; that'd mean this whole thing is about OIL.

It's really sad when the highest office holders of the only superpower in the world make the Keystone Kops look like the most efficient and effective performance of law enforcement/military force.

Hey, what's next wingers?

Next will be that the Iranians are fervently hoping for the insurgents to succeed, but not actually materially supporting them.

We secred the oil ministry AND the interior ministry, so you can't say the bushista didn't put any thought into it. For him that might be a pretty good ewffort. Pity about the cost.

This news has always been out there. It's nice to see a report covering this period, but it's pretty hard to get a succinct story out on a campaign that has such rediculous and wide-spread failures when there are a number of voluble supporters who can't even yet admit one actual fact of this gross disaster. And that starts at the top.

Hey, what's next wingers?

They'll start complaining that Iran is selling Iraqis too many ACs and automobiles.

cmdicely: Next will be that the Iranians are fervently hoping for the insurgents to succeed, but not actually materially supporting them.

Ahhhh. Sitting in a circle and directing refrains of the Islamic version of Kumbahyah in the general direction of Iraq.

Got it.

In winger world, that would still constitute an act of war sufficient to justify invading Iran and killing as many Iranians as possible, after we torture them, of course.

Much in the way that nobody could have predicted the chaotic aftermath of the invasion, similarly, nobody could have predicted the deadly effects of these weapons in the wrong hands.

Stop trying to make political hay out of a mistake that anyone could (and would!) have made. Weapons used to kill? Unthinkable in a pre-Iraq invasion world.

phleabo: Much in the way that nobody could have predicted the chaotic aftermath of the invasion, similarly, nobody could have predicted the deadly effects of these weapons in the wrong hands.

LMAO at the absolute stupidity or utter dishonesty of this comment.

Too, too funny!

I bet the halibushcheyngang are secretly extracting oil and flying it out, bypassing pipelines.

Mission accomplished.

Why else do you think we need 2 dozen plus permanent military bases peppered across the desert.

I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

The oil is in our hands one tway or tother.

Well oiled be darned, so that's the plan!

Prove me wrong folks.

All the violence is mere smokescreen to cover up the oil extraction.

Kevin wrote:
> You know, the ones that were in caches throughout > the country that were ignored because we didn't
> have enough troops to occupy the country

You liberals have some nerve. First you bitch that there are too many soldiers in Iraq. Then you complain when things happen because there are too *few* soldiers in Iraq. You should be ashamed, especially you, Kevin.

Oops. I think phleabo was making a funny, perhaps, rather than a serious comment.

My bad.

CMDICELY: Next will be that the Iranians are fervently hoping for the insurgents to succeed, but not actually materially supporting them.

David: You liberals have some nerve. First you bitch that there are too many soldiers in Iraq. Then you complain when things happen because there are too *few* soldiers in Iraq.

Well, it is better than bitching about absolutely nothing and just sitting around watching while Bush runs the GOP into the swampland of electoral defeat and the country into the black hole of Iraq, while stomping all over the Constitution.

I recall hearing tales of unsecured explosives during the 2004 campaign. It was all a lie, right? It was just John Kerry, unhinged and disloyal as usual, attacking our troops and calling them incompetent. Right?

Well that's the bad news.

The good news is that after being injured by friendly fire they come to the best health care system in the world baby!

Best in the world baby!

There's a lot of oil smuggling going on for a fact. That's where the insurgents get most of their funds.

Repub coined a great word which I think applies perfectly to 'halibushcheyngang ' - sanctamoneyous

hmmmmmmmmmmmm. . .

Gore right about global warming.

Kerry right about the war.

Bush right about absolutely nothing.

Two Dem presidential candidates right in their predictions, one GOP presidential candidate wrong in his predictions.

No wonder the GOP lost the last election and Bush is currently mired in the low 40s, 12-13 points under Clinton's lowest second term approval rating.

David, you have the memory of a gnat. We were bitching about the number of troops right from the start. But Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld assured us it was all okay. And everything has been perfect since then. Which is why you are so very, very happy today, right?

... too many soldiers in Iraq... too *few* soldiers in Iraq...David at 6:04 PM

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

les: "Unsecured munitions don't kill people, Iranian infiltrators do."

Really? You have any conclusive proof of the latter -- that is, proof from bonafide independent sources?

Because somehow, the Bush administration's shrill invective just doesn't sound convinicing to anyone else here, except for you and the other trolls still riding around in Karl Rove's Gnome-mobile.

Get this,

Building Fire at DOJ Covers Raid, Shredding or Disclosure?

I notice American Squawk, Al or Egbert haven't weighted in yet. No suprise there. They hate the troops.

...the ones that were in caches throughout the country

Yeah, another one of those little oversight problems that the Commander and Chief of MAJOR Incompetence didn't bother with, since he was too busy letting Rove stuff dirty old Dubya's socks in crotch of his underwear in the “Mission Accomplished� flight suit.

I was watching PBS Newshour and the every paranoid Mark Sheilds (hint: the secret is to chill out and just laugh at Brooks, dude really) and I can only imagine that Brooks (who is obviously nearly hyper ventilating over Pelosi's power in the house, cause she is some kind of marvel isn't she) and thus, Brooks is so nervious that I am suprised taht Sheild's didn't pick up the scent of fear.

Brooks is almost on the verge of screaming like a girl, really, really, really.

I can just see Brooks dreaming about Pelosi as the shark in Peter Benchly's JAWS, relentlessly circling poor little Brookies - and if he's not careful - she take off a leg, dude.

If you watch carefully, you can see the sweat beading on Brooks's face. If only they didn't put all the eggs in monkey Bush's basket.

Repugs will change or die.

jeez, no one's going to congratulate bg,rs for making the big time?

i will, then. nice work, blue girl.

your pal,
blake

Remember not too long ago, the MSM was hyping the copper and pvc pipes being used along with the hmx and rdx explosives that were looted on our watch?

The attempt was to deflect our attention away from the looted explosives.

And, David, we went to .."war with the army that we had not the one that we wished we had." (Donny R.)

The looting occurred because of the dimwittedness of the power-pointed pre-war-plan conned neo-cons who were con-vinced that shockin and awing were all we had to do to secure the vast desert country of Iraq.

But folks (like me) knew that the war was going to suck (and had been since 1991).

sO, WE'VE SPENT A TRILLION DOLLHAIRS.

For what?

My apologies to the Iraqis for the incompetence of our administration.

Or as Curly Howard said to . Is the (war) in competent hands? ~"Cointenly, They're all incompetent, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk..."

AND.... Bush is almost going WHAAAAA today.

Bush came in as a nasty guy, and he'll ago out a nasty guy. In fact, Nixon is going to actually look respectable next to little Bushie going bye-bye....in an act of political theater, indeedy.

If all else fails, little Bushie could throw himself to the floor in temper tantrum JUST LIKE A FIVE-YEAR-OLD.

That’s it, little Bushie, show the world your true Presidential timber bud, (or your complete lack thereof).

Thanks, Blake.

And thanks to Kevin, too.

I notice American Squawk, Al or Egbert haven't weighted in yet. No suprise there. They hate the troops.

Posted by: This Machine Kills Fascists on March 23, 2007 at 7:59 PM

No need to get snarky, TMKF.

Actually this is good news, althouhg it obviously doesn't seeem so at first glance. Casualties from the enemy are low, which makes friendly fire appear high only in comparison.

Please explain how it is good news that insurgents have appropriated unsecured munitions and are blowing up our troops? How can that possibly be good news. You should have taken that advice you are always so eager to dispense: ALWAYS CLICK THE LINK. The post Kevin linked to is not about incidents of friendly fire.

It wasn't just we didn't have enough troops. This was the very worst consequence of the fact that the administration threw out tens years of Pentagon planning, as its second act of egregious criminal negligence. The first of course being the absolute nothing that followed the clear and repeated warning of 8/6/01, generated by a system that was already blinking red, a system that waited in vain for a leader to act.

This is clearly yet another incredible lapse in the planning and execution by the civilian authority. The military was simply not ordered to guard the supplies, and the dishonest translation of criticism of this negligence into blame directed at the military is being used to cover up for the administration and the media.

When they threw out the pre-existing plans, and substituted some bushie's ideology, these derelict people not only allowed massive amounts of conventional weapons from the vast supplies of Stalin's Mini-Me to be taken, but even neglected to guard special IAEA-tracked sites-- so tracked due to the connection to WMD !

Where were the great satellites, that can track our license plates, when perhaps thousands of tons of material were moved? What happened to our great intelligence system? If such a system can't help with this, what good is the $40B a year doing?

And now comes a report that they STILL haven't cleaned it up.

Even with bases in Iraq, how the hell could anyone guard all that infrastructure ? ( Make the joint uninhabitable. That's another story )

McPundit >"...Best in the world baby!"

Snark Friday !

Gotta love it.

[and yea, KUDOs to BGRS]

"All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door." - John Kenneth Galbraith

No need to get snarky, TMKF.

Actually this is good news, althouhg it obviously doesn't seeem so at first glance. Casualties from the enemy are low, which makes friendly fire appear high only in comparison.

Posted by: Al on March 23, 2007 at 9:44 PM

Snarky is the only proper response to something this stupid. Friendly fire? You must be retarded.

BGRS.... most excellent.

Is it just me or do Al, American Hawk and egbert never show up at the same time here? Kind of like Michael Jackson and his sister LaToya? Really freaky, man.

If only we'd left all those explosives and weapons in Saddam's hands, the world would be a lot safer today.

FitterDon: "Is it just me or do Al, American Hawk and egbert never show up at the same time here? Kind of like Michael Jackson and his sister LaToya? Really freaky, man."

Al, American Hawk, and egbert are currently spending a weekend together in Ft. Lauderdale, getting to know one another.

The standard military technique for dealing with ammo dumps during an invasion has always been massive aerial bombardment. Would have worked here, too. What's a few thousand more dead Iraqis?

I think the Daily show had an interesting take on this during the dust up over Iran supposedly supplying weapons, and the White House's mantra that we should fight over there before we have to fight them over here.
When John Oliver was told by Stewart that in fact we were guilty of allowing weapons to fall into enemy hands, Oliver suggested that we should fight ourselves over here before we had to fight ourselves over there. Makes about as much sense as a lot of other things in this war.

BGRS also has a fresh post on the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. What sucks -- besides the damn coverup and Pat's death -- is the Pentagon held the info to quote BGRS:

...until after the vote on funding the wars. They held it until the newscasts were over in the eastern and central time zones, so over half of the country would miss it.... ...This was cynically timed to be "old news" by Monday when they think most people will learn about it.

Globe, this one's for you...

Two blogs from Blue Girl, oh, how they sizzle and hum.
She hat tips the good but rips the ugly and dumb.
Though her record isn't long,
Two years so far going strong,
She gets help with a nod from PA's Kevin Drum.

*hoists a beer*

Thank you very much Apollo. Your support is very much appreciated. Nine officers being disciplined - four generals and they sit on that news?

Wretched, simply wretched.

patrick wrote:

"When John Oliver was told by Stewart that in fact we were guilty of allowing weapons to fall into enemy hands, Oliver suggested that we should fight ourselves over here before we had to fight ourselves over there."
_______________________

We ARE fighting ourselves over here.

"A Pentagon investigation will recommend nine officers, including up to four generals, be held accountable for missteps in the aftermath of the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, AP reports citing senior defense officials."
_____________________

Uh, Blue Girl, this is in the nature of a leak, perhaps "official," perhaps not. No way to tell, given how Washington works. By UCMJ rules, an actual notification of punishment can only be announced after a finding of guilt. In the normal course of events, the results of an investigation that might lead to disciplinary action are not released at all, except to the convening authority, the prosecutors and defense attorneys. This is to protect the rights of the accused. You can bet the lawyers for the accused will not casually dismiss the release of the investigation results before their clients have the chance to defend themselves.

It's funny that in March, April, May 2003 when I blogged about this noone gave a shit.

Actually, it's not that funny, but I guess as the immortal Billmon put it, I was an "airhead", so easily dismissed.

I notice American Squawk never showed up in this thread. That says it all.

dnc: "If only we'd left all those explosives and weapons in Saddam's hands, the world would be a lot safer today."

We´ve left some of the English language in your hands and yet we seem to be surviving so far.

Gotta love this last line of defense: Sure, it´s a cock-up, but can you imagine the cock-up if we hadn´t cocked it up ourselves?

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=al+Qa+Qaa&kgs=1&kls=0

The weapons site at al Qa Qaa became an issue during October 04. It wasn't a huge scandal but it was big enough that it certainly was hurting Bush. Subsequently the Bush campaign stomped it's feet and that this was old news so bringing it up late in the campaign was proof that the media was biased and out to get Bush.

Well that's all it took. The story disappeared instantly never to be heard of again, till now.

Blue Girl also makes Salon's Blog Report with a prominent link.

*cheering*

sO, WE'VE SPENT A TRILLION DOLLHAIRS.

It's a trillion we don't even have. Gave away about that to the very top of the wealth scale in tax cuts.

Borrowed several trillion from the Social Security Trust Fund. Borrowed from the Japanese, SK, and Chinese too. Of course their motive wasn't generosity was it?

Their motive was to only keep the dollar from plunging off the cliff until they don't need it any more. Keep their currencies cheap, their high subsidized exports flowing in and ours expensive in relative terms (although a loss of 35% over 6 years is still pretty impressive when the Treasury keeps telling us how low inflation is - huh?).

BGRS--smiling and waving, with high-fives your way

We all await the coming day of BGRS a'rantin' with Keith Olbermann.

Tom Nicholson, having a dim recollection of the US aiding Iraq - Well, Cheney, Rumdumb and a few others among the Repugs, have a fading "dim" recollection as well.

Thanks for bringing that era back into perspective. Funny about the selective memory of those Repugs - their memory concerning political enemies never fades, only their memory of their own misdeeds.

This post of Kevin's seems particularly ugly, for several reasons:

1. It takes pleasure in the misfortune of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis.

2. It offers no useful aid or insight.

3. There's no guarantee that more troops would have solved the problem. How would they have found all the arms sites? Surely liberals would have objected if water-boarding were routinely used to get good intelligence.

4. Saddam had so many arms sites that even if our troops had found twice as many, there would have still been many out there.

5. Kevin fails to notice that in the absense of the US invasion, all of these arms depots would still be there. In fact, there would have been many more arms depots that Saddam would have built using stolen Oil-for-food money.

6. My bottom line is: I don't like it when people who did nothing to solve a problem justify their inaction by noting that those who actually dealt with the problem did so imperfectly.

Sorry couch potatoes. You're not morally superior to Abraham Lincoln, whose military errors in the Civil War cost hundreds of thousands of lives, nor to FDR, whose errors in WW2 cost millions of lives, nor to Bush and Rumsfeld, whose errors also cost many lives.

Congratulations, Blue Girl.

Rumsfeld:
Guilty of the murder of 3145 American Troops.

ex-liberal,

Truly, you are beneath contempt.

BGRS,

Congrats, and thanks.

ex-lib: Sorry couch potatoes. You're not morally superior to Abraham Lincoln...

Abraham Lincoln might say of you:

"I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him."

If Abe were still alive... : - )

I love Abraham Lincoln because he was right out of the Old Testament in so many ways. But you know he did jump into an "unnecessary" and extremely bloody war with the secessionist states.

He could have chosen, after all, to let Fort Sumter go. The South was not out to invade and occupy the Northern states, but under Lincoln the North very much set out on an extremely bloody program to "retake" the South. In furtherance of this program the Lincoln administration would:

(1) Close down Democrat-friendly newspapers in the North and arrest their editors. For the most part these newspapers embarassed the administration by printing true estimates of the casualties of various big battles and constantly clamoured for negotiations with the Confederacy.

(2) Hang dozens of young men who were caught in civilian clothes near railroad trestles and bridges, mainly on the evidence of Southern accents.

(3) Authorize absolutely genocidal attacks on Native American villages in Idaho and Wyoming in order to protect nearby gold camps vital to the Northern war effort.

(4) Ran a prison camp for captured Confederates in Chicago that was Nazi-Germany brutal in its policies and use of torture. It fed the prisoners a little better than the Southern facility at Andersonville.

(5) In order to shield the President from adverse publicity during the critical election of November, 1864, Gen. U.S. Grant left thousands of wounded Union soldiers to die on the fields of a failed offensive at Cold Harbor.
Grant was afraid that newspapers would interpet that calling a truce to clean up the battlefield
of wounded as a sure admission of another stalemate battle, which it was. After three days of horrible suffering most of the seriously wounded were dead and the election was in the bag.

(6) Lincoln may not have followed this approach himself, but his total-war policy against the South lead directly to a total-submission Reconstruction program for the South that failed miserably, reigniting racism and extremely bitter feelings as the devastated South languished for many decades in poverty.

You mean THESE MUNITIONS!