As these articles so depressingly point out, Al-Qaqaa was just the tip of the iceberg. Munitions dumps and weapon/explosive storage areas all over Iraq were left unguarded due to lack of sufficient troop strength and the lack of any coherent post-invasion plan to deal with this glaring and menacing problem.
Unfortunately, all too many elements of the main stream press are focusing solely on Al Qaqaa and are missing the larger point - namely, that what went on at Al-Qaqaa was far from unique and was rather part of an indemic problem brought on by Bush's incompetence and negligence . . . incompetence and negligence which is endangering the lives of our troops.
Obviously, the mainstream media needs to be contacted and shown the light on this subject - ideally before the Sunday morning talk shows.
Further, as the last article I link to below points out, the looting of these weapons storage facilities is an ongoing problem and the Bush Administration STILL isn't providing enough troops or guidance to deal with it.
The sheer scope of the negligence and bungling in Iraq by this Administration will fill entire history books in the years ahead.
http://oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/front_page/1099052619177610.xml
"Six months after the fall of Baghdad, a vast Iraqi weapons depot with tens of thousands of artillery rounds and other explosives remained unguarded, according to two U.S. aid workers who say they reported looting of the site to U.S. military officials.
"The aid workers say they informed Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the highest ranking Army officer in Iraq in October 2003 but were told that the United States did not have enough troops to seal off the facility, which included more than 60 bunkers packed with munitions.
"'We were outraged,' said Wes Hare, city manager of La Grande, who was working in Iraq as part of a rebuilding program. A colleague who also visited the depot, Jerry Kuhaida, said it appeared that the explosives at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area had found their way to insurgents targeting U.S. forces.
"'There's no question in my mind that the stuff in Ukhaider was used by terrorists,' said Kuhaida."
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=211192
"An official with the group Human Rights Watch said Saturday he alerted the U.S. military in May 2003 to a cache of hundreds of warheads in Iraq containing high explosives but that the weapons still hadn't been secured when he left the area 10 days later.
"Peter Bouckaert, who heads the New York-based group's international emergency team, told The Associated Press he was shown a room 'stacked to the roof' with surface-to-surface warheads on May 9, 2003, on the grounds of the 2nd Military College in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
"Bouckaert said he gave U.S. officials the exact location of the warheads, but that by the time he left the area on May 19, 2003, he had seen no U.S. forces at the site, which he said was being looted daily by armed men."
"Bouckaert said he eventually was put in touch with unidentified U.S. officials and showed them on a map where the stash was located, also giving them the exact GPS coordinates for the site.
"But he said he never saw U.S. forces at the site when he returned to the area for daily interviews with refugees, and that the site still was not secured when he finally left the area.
"'For the next 10 days I continued working near this site and going back regularly to interview displaced people, and nothing was done to secure the site,' he said.
"Looting was taking place by a lot of armed men with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades," Bouckaert said. He said each of the warheads contained an estimated 57 pounds of high explosives.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/26/iraq_weapons_caches/index.html
" . . . the missing munitions at Al Qaqaa are only the tip of the iceberg and in all likelihood represent a mere fraction of the illicit explosive material currently circulating in Iraq."
"Indeed, the breadth and depth of the problem of captured weapons in Iraq are difficult to definitively assess, let alone describe . . . ."
"The threat posed by stockpiles like those I saw at Taqaddum is disconcerting, but what makes the situation infinitely worse is the realization that of the 103 weapon sites that the United States is aware of in western Iraq, only a handful are ever guarded on a regular basis, which means that insurgents bent on killing Americans have easily accessible and free material with which to make bombs of all sorts."
"There simply aren't enough American soldiers in Iraq to guard and dispose of all of the weapons stockpiles we know of . . ."
"Without being cavalier about the weapons loss at Al Qaqaa, it is crucial to remember that the cache is just one repository among thousands in Iraq. The real and persistent danger is that America's continued mismanagement of the arms caches across Iraq is arming and equipping the very enemy the United States is dedicated to destroying and providing a key service to the insurgency."