Inspired by the
"outrage" diary recommended now, I decided to thread together some of the best links and talking points on the October "Surprise" (Bush's incompetence in guarding the ammo dumps aint no surprise to me!)
380 tons of outrage, and what to do with it!
(Obvious) memes and talking points:
- More proof that Bush and Rummy f'd up the post-invasion effort.
- Remember the failure to guard ammo dumps that Kerry was talking about in the debates? Well, there you go.
- Isn't "keeping us safe" the President's campaign theme? This is 380 TONS of explosives - 760,000 POUNDS worth of stuff useful for killing Iraqis, our troops, Madrid communters, etc. and may still be ripping up Iraq today. A pound of similar stuff brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, and this stuff was used in the 2003 Riyadh housing complex bombing.
Attack plan below the fold, plus latest links. If you have things to add, I'll update. Move out!
Update [2004-10-25 14:5:41 by VirginiaDem]:Second wave of talking points:
1. Condi Rice was out of the loop and only told about this recently, and now she's on the campaign trail. A competent NSA would have known about this over a year ago. A competent NSA would be solving the problem, not campaigning.
2. The obvious question: What are you doing about this crisis Mr. President? The obvious answer: Nothing. The president has no response and no plan. A competent Commander in Chief ("War President") would have addressed this problem over a year ago.
3. The White House knew about this for many months, perhaps over a year, and didn't tell the American people about this. In fact, wasn't the President just asked to name his mistakes? COVERUP!
4. Bush is making the world LESS safe. This stuff was under lock and key when the UN inspectors were in Iraq. Bush effectively kicks them out by starting this war, and even though he was told about these explosives by the UN, he fails to safeguard this stuff!
Five things to do and keep doing this week:
- Blog this and keep blogging this - stay on the offensive. A recommendation to Kos, Atrios, Bowers, etc. - this story and its fallout, in some shape or form, should be at the top of your homepages for several days.
- Attack the conservative blogs, pundits, news outlets and put them on the defensive. Ask them how the heck they think Bush is the man to keep us safer with this track record.
- Obviously, time for an LTE explosion on this topic. Also call into local radio shows.
- Email a link to this story to EVERYONE and post these links on message boards! And use any and all of the links provide below on your blogs, your LTEs, etc. (I think this helps Google determine its top story).
- Freep the holy heck out of the Yahoo stories designated below, and any other new stories.
LINKS:
Update [2004-10-25 11:45:56 by VirginiaDem]: Defensive talking points (I'm de-emphasizing this because we need to be on the offensive here, but in case Freeper's try their pathetic spin):
1. These are not WMD. If we find a stockpile of metal that could be used to case WMD, that's not proof that Iraq HAD WMD. Ever damn country with an army has explosives (that can obviously be used to TRIGGER weapons of mass destruction). It's just we haven't invaded all those countries and failed to guard their ammo dumps (at least not yet - four more years?)
2. Any argument akin to "The war prevented Saddam from using this stuff" is ludicrous. What's better? For this stuff to be sealed by the IAEA and accounted for, or for it to be in the hands of insurgents trying to blow up our troops? Please.
Update [2004-10-25 23:5:20 by VirginiaDem]:
The freepers think that somehow, this helps them:
NBC News: Miklaszewski: “April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qakaa weapons
installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International
Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not
enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq.” (NBC’s “Nightly News,” 10/25/04)
I have no link for this, and am only seeing this on message boards right now.
So now that they've conceded that this stuff had to have disappeared post-invasion (see Scott McClellan on this) on April 9, 2003 at the earliest. This is still a huge problem for Bush because:
- At that point, the war was already 3 weeks old, meaning that the invasion plans did not account for securing this site. Of course, they did secure the Oil Ministry.
- They knew that the Iraqi insurgents possibly had 380 tons of these explosives since April 2003, and didn't tell the American people or the troops? They didn't send in more troops to help get the peace, or even give them adequate body armor? In fact, they staged that stupid air craft carrier stunt instead? Yikes. If this is good for Bush, they are desperate.
In any event, the Pentagon still says that our troops did see this stuff in March - see this AP story:
At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
This means that, even if in April the troops returned and found the stuff missing, our troops were at the site in March and were not given proper instructions to secure 380 tons of deadly explosives. Oops! That's pretty shoddy war planning.