It's confirmed. A French reporter witnessed Iraqi insurgents looting al Qaqaa 6 months after the invasion.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/29/news/explode.html
A French journalist who visited the Qaqaa munitions depot south of Baghdad in November last year said she witnessed Islamic insurgents looting vast supplies of explosives more than six months after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime.
This is a very damning article. It just wasn't a priority. It sat as a reservoir of munitions for the insurgents for months.
"I was utterly stupefied to see that a place like that was pretty much unguarded and that insurgents could help themselves for months on end," Daniel said on Friday. "We were there for a long time and no one disturbed the group while they were loading their truck."
A man who identified himself as Abu Abdallah and led the group Daniel was with, told her that his men and numerous other insurgent groups had rushed to Qaqaa after U.S.-led troops captured Baghdad on April 9 last year. The groups stole truck-loads of material from what used to be the biggest explosive factory in the Middle East in the expectation that coalition forces would move quickly to seal it off, Daniel was told.
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Abu Abdullah and his men showed her the arsenal of rocket launchers, grenades and explosives hidden near their small farm houses, she said.
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But much to the insurgents' surprise, Qaqaa was not sealed off by U.S. soldiers, leading many groups to stop hoarding and instead going for regular refills of explosive materials, according to Abu Abdullah.
For the kicker:
Daniel said those who went to Qaqaa to stock up on munitions appeared ready to use them to attack the occupying forces. On Nov. 22, a few days after her visit at Qaqaa, Abu Abdallah's group fired a surface-to-air missile at a DHL cargo-plane. The men gave her a video tape of themselves launching the attack in which she says she clearly recognized Abu Abdallah.
Wow. This is criminal negligence resulting in the death and maiming of thousands.