Friday, March 23, 2007

Bush Hates America: Iraqi Weapons Caches Are Still Open!

Here's some horrifying and unsurprising news, from Agence France-Presse, via Raw Story (with emphasis added):

Unguarded munition sites still feed Iraq violence: report
As of October 2006 US forces had still not secured all of the unguarded munition sites in Iraq, allowing thieves to keep stealing war material and stoke the country's violence, a US government report said Thursday.

The Government Accountability Office said that not enough soldiers were available to take control of massive arms dumps across Iraq after the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
All this time and not a single head!

They've left these arms caches open for all this time, while insurgents kept stealing whatever they needed to kill more and more people -- American troops as well as civilians -- and not a single head has rolled over this scandal!

Amazing! Or is it?
"Not securing these conventional munitions storage site has been costly, as government reports indicated that looted munitions are being used to make improvised explosive devices (IED) that have killed or maimed many people, and will likely continue to support terrorist attacks in the region," the GAO report summary reads.

"Conventional munitions storage sites were looted after major combat operations and some remained vulnerable as of October 2006."
Please notice that nobody's saying the sites are secured now; they're only saying October 2006 was the limit of their research. Most of the sites are probably still open!

But let's not worry about that; it's time for some spin from the Pentagon:
"The widespread looting occurred because DOD (the Department of Defense) had insufficient troop levels to secure conventional munitions storage sites," it said, citing war reports and defense officials.
Well of course! They always blame everything on insufficient troop levels! But on the other hand,
"DOD does not appear to have conducted a theaterwide survey and assessment of the current risk unsecured conventional munitions represent to US forces and others."
... which raises the question: Why would the DOD not even bother to look into it? ... unless they just don't care ... or unless ... maybe ... just maybe ... this is the way they wanted it!