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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavesM who wrote (32597)	10/28/2004 1:00:21 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 173976

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. Monday's New York Times contained a front-page story describing the disappearance of nearly 380 tons of high-powered explosives from a sensitive weapons cache outside Baghdad known as Al Qaqaa. "60 Minutes" plans to air a story on the subject Sunday evening, one day and a wake-up call before the election gets underway. Given that the types of explosive materials that have gone missing are essential in the manufacture of nuclear weapons and car bombs and that they were used in several high-profile terrorist bombings -- including the 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland -- this untimely revelation could be the much-prophesied, but so far missing in action October surprise. Regarding the general situation of unaccounted-for explosives, physicist and weapons expert Ivan Oelrich, a former consultant for the U.S. Army and now with the Federation of American Scientists, put it this way: "I'll bet if you took all the car bombs that have gone off in Iraq in the past six months and tallied them, [they] would add up to a couple of tons of high explosives. So if they're doing what they're doing with two or three tons, what difference does it make if they have 380 more?" 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. In discussing Iraq, it is easy to overuse Vietnam analogies, but it is nevertheless worth remembering that one of the key developments in the early stages of that war occurred in early 1962 when the Viet Cong began acquiring stolen U.S. small arms through the black market. For a budding insurgency beginning to solidify its movement, there are few things more invigorating than a sudden inrush of weapons and equipment. In the larger context of a shifting battlefield, such a development is oftentimes a catalyst for an even wider and deadlier war. fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/salon40.htm