Comments on: Once more, with feeling

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It would be huge, if any real news sources picked it up. AFAIK, “Worldtribune.com” is a glorified blog.

By: The Baculum King

The Baculum King — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yep, HUGE story. After a year we can’t prevent the looting of entire buildings from obviously sensitive sites. Or is Saddam somehow smuggling his vast arsenal from where-ever he’s being held?? And his brilliant master plan is sending this arsenal to scrap yards all over the Middle East for recycling??

Downright diabolical.

Pay no attention to the fact that NOT ONE WORD concerning Saddam having any part in this came from anybody at the U.N.

By: SayUncle

SayUncle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

After a year we can’t prevent the looting of entire buildings from obviously sensitive sites

Uhm, most this occured before we got there. How precisley could we have prevented it prior to that? Oh, by having not listened to the UN.

By: The Baculum King

The Baculum King — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It’s still going on. Two or three weeks ago I remember a story about truckloads of unused oilfield pipe coming into Jordanian scrapyards by the truckload out of Iraq.

Look again at the dates on the satellite photos that “demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war.”

“Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.”

Who was in charge of Iraq from May, 2003 to Feb, 2004?? If we left a “ballistic missile site” unsecured everybody in-country over a PFC is incompetent. If we didn’t leave the site unsecured we let somebody tear it down and haul it off.

Which scenario do you prefer, incompetent or stupid??

By: SayUncle

SayUncle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have said many times that one of the biggest failings of this war was not securing weapons sites quickly. Now, I have no doubt that the moving of WMDs is still going on. But the fact is they were given time to prepare the move from the beginning.

By: The Baculum King

The Baculum King — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The real clincher is the last sentence:
“In April, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Mohammed El Baradei said material from Iraqi nuclear facilities were being smuggled out of the country.”
As in ongoing.

It is incredibly stupid that we invaded without sufficient troops to secure ALL sensitive sites, whether ammo storage areas or nuclear facilities or museums. It is even stupider that we just winked at looting from Day 1, like letting the Iraqis have an orgy of unchecked looting was going to keep them from resenting us when they were done, and like most everything we allowed to be destroyed wasn’t going to be replaced with American tax dollars.

The only part of this abortion that was done well was the ground assault, which was damned-near doomed by the assumption that the collapse of the uniformed Iraqi forces would be followed by flower-throwing, so we failed to deploy Armored Cav to secure supply lines.

By: Les Jones

Les Jones — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Baculum: you do know that the museum looting story was bogus, right?

By: The Baculum King

The Baculum King — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Les,
Well, the “looting” of the National Museum was greatly overblown, but several smaller museums and sites were plundered, and the lawlessness that was tolerated (“Freedom means people are free to do bad things”) still hasn’t been overcome.

If that’s the only word out of several paragraphs one can dig out to quibble with I’m on the right track

By: damnum absque injuria

damnum absque injuria — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Oh, Those WMD, Um, Maybe, Um, I Think
Several prominent conservative bloggers are wondering aloud why this isn’t a bigger one in the news right now. Personally, I think it’s being overshadowed by this.