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10/26/2004: I've not blogged about Al Qa Qaa....
but I'm sure you've heard the details. Thanks to continuing Bush incompetence, 350 metric tons (380 U.S. tons) of HMX and RDX explosives have gone missing in Iraq during the occupation. MSNBC explains what these are:
HMX and RDX can be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners, produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weapons. HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives, such as C-4 and Semtex — substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 1 pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people. [emphasis supplied --LRC]Over at Democratic Veteran, frequent commenter Boloboffin puts it all in perspective for us:
There are 380 tons of high quality explosives missing in Iraq. Using English tons, that means 760,000 pounds of RDX.No, God won't help us, because there is no such animal. But I share your fear.
A single pound of RDX was enough to bring down the Lockerbie plane, so let's say that five pounds makes an adequate car bomb or suicide bomb.
Just to be on the safe side.
That means that the 38 tons of missing RDX could supply the Iraqi insurgency with 152,000 bombs. If they used three of these bombs against our troops and the Iraqi people every day, they would have enough explosives to keep bombing us for over four hundred years.
416.4 years, to be precise.
And all because somebody in the Bush Administration decided not to guard a single facility. The International Atomic Energy Association specifically warned them about this site, but they blew it off.
And now the Iraqi insurgency can bring it on for the next four centuries.
The IAEA was worried about this explosive material at all, because RDX is an ideal substance to trigger the explosive force of nuclear weapons. And now 380 tons of it is missing next door to Iran, a country currently developing nuclear weapons.
Along with several buildings (yes, actual buildings) that can be implemented to construct nuclear weapons.
And the man President Bush wanted to be the leader of the new Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi, the man who supplied much of the faultly pre-war intelligence, was recently exposed as a likely Iranian double agent.
Explain to me again how the world is now a safer place because George Bush put Saddam Hussein in a prison cell. Explain to me again how we and our loved ones in Iraq are safer because of this incompetent ideologue.
God help us all.
Bush making us safer? Don't make me laugh!
Len on 10.26.04 @ 12:05 PM CST
