The claim (lie) that the 260 TONS of explosives were already gone by April 9 can only be made if coalition forces went to the site at that time and saw they were gone. That would mean the administration knew they were gone in early 2001.
There's only one problem with that...the White House has spent the entire day claiming (lying again) that they knew nothing about this until ten days ago, October 15th.
Scott McClellan said this repeatedly during his gaggle with reporters this morning. Indeed, he went on to say the following: "Now [i.e., after the notification on October 15th], the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi survey group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing."
So McClellan says that the Pentagon only just learned about this.
There's a problem with that too...
What's clear in Nelson's and TPM's reporting is that the administration has known about this for at least a year. But they've gone to great lengths to hide the facts both from monitoring organizations like the IAEA but also, by extension, from the American public.
talkingpointsmemo.com
When the US was still the occupying power in Iraq, we didn't inform the IAEA.
And once Iraqis were in semi-control over the reporting process and now under de jure control, with the reestablishment of a nominally sovereign Iraqi government, the US continued to order the Iraqis not to report the theft of the explosives to the IAEA.
There are a number of reasons why you can imagine the White House and the civilians at the Pentagon wouldn't want to inform the IAEA. But one pretty clear one is that letting the IAEA find out would pretty clearly mean that the American public would find out what a major league screw-up the president and his advisors had allowed to happen.
Only a couple weeks ago did the Iraqis finally report the theft to the IAEA. And from there it was only a matter of time till the yearlong cover-up started to unravel.
But it didn't even stop there.
As I've noted, the White House and the Pentagon have known for more than a year that this stuff had gone missing. But the White House, according to TPM sources, has known that this story was coming for at least ten days. Again, not just the underlying facts -- that the stuff had been stolen and was being used against American troops (they've known that for more than a year) -- but the fact that this story was going to break in the not too distant future. And they've been hoping it could be pushed back until after the election.
As another administration source told Nelson, "What the hell were WE doing in the year and a half from the time we knew the stuff was gone, is obviously a huge question, and you can imagine why no one [in the Administration] wants to face up to it, certainly not before the election."
Another told Nelson, "You would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information."
It's a story that really brings together the adminstration's two cardinal sins: dishonesty and incompetence.
And what other stories are they trying to push back until after November 2nd? |
