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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (149670)	10/28/2004 8:49:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Probably even trucks carrying weapons are included in such a total Tanks or aircraft would not normally be called munitions. The shells or missiles or bombs that they use would. Transport trucks simply don't qualify as munitions. There is some evidence coming out that it may have been a lot less then 380 (or really the claim was 377) tons. I don't think the "400,000 tons" number is one that can be used with any degree of certainty that its accurate. If it's half of that and the explosives where only 1/5th the 377 tons would only be a small part of the total. And if it is inaccurate it could also be inaccurate on the low side. I've seen other estimates of more like a million tons. Further more the non explosive parts of many types of weapons makes them more deadly. An RPG warhead is more dangerous in many cases then the small amount of explosives it contains. 380 tons = 760,000 pounds of high explosives, enough to down 760,000 airplanes with bombs like that which downed Pan Am 103. 1,500,000 simple anti-civilian weapons. 360,000 train destroying suitcases. And I suppose if you can surgically implant a 1/8th of an ounce in peoples brains you could kill the population of CA and TX twice over. A big pile of explosives is not the same as the same amount of explosives skillfully prepared and carefully deployed at the most vulnerable point. This is not to say that the explosives are not a matter for some concern but lack of explosives is not holding back Al Qaeda or the Iraqi resistance. When you add that fact to the fact that their may have never been nearly that much explosives, that any explosives at the site may have been moved long before we had soldiers in the area, and that there is no evidence that such a cache of explosives fell in to terrorist hands it becomes clear that this supposed scandal isn't based on solid information. Tim