Political Forecast

Huge breaking news tonight! Speculation has been spreading across the Internet world as well in some newsrooms of the possibility that a huge munitions dump had been unguarded after the US invasion of Iraq or that some kind of catastrophe had happened. Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo broke the story for me tonight from information he received from The Nelson Report.

Now the New York Times has broken the story to do and it should be a huge front page splash tomorrow morning.

Here’s a brief synopsis, if that is possible in this situation, from the Times:

“The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, produce missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq’s most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man’s land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished after the American invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed.”

Why did this happen? Josh Marshall has lots of interesting analysis on TPM (see link above). I simply can’t fathom how this could happen.

More from the story:

“The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the I.A.E.A.’s Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa.

But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces “went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal.” It is unclear whether they ever returned.

By late 2003, diplomats said, I.A.E.A. experts had obtained commercial satellite photos of Al Qaqaa showing that two of roughly 10 bunkers that contained HMX appeared to have been leveled by titanic blasts, apparently during the war. They presumed some of the HMX had exploded, but that is unclear.

Other HMX bunkers were untouched. Some were damaged but not devastated. I.A.E.A. experts say they assume that just before the invasion the Iraqis followed their standard practice of moving crucial explosives out of buildings, so they would not be tempting targets. If so, the experts say, the Iraqi must have broken I.A.E.A. seals on bunker doors and moved most of the HMX to nearby fields, where it would have been lightly camouflaged - and ripe for looting.

But the Bush administration would not allow the agency back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile. In May 2004, Iraqi officials say in interviews, they warned L. Paul Bremer III, the American head of the occupation authority, that Al Qaqaa had probably been looted. It is unclear if that warning was passed anywhere. Efforts to reach Mr. Bremer by telephone were unsuccessful. But by that time, the Americans were preoccupied with the transfer of authority to Iraq, and the insurgency was gaining strength. “It’s not an excuse,” said one senior administration official. “But a lot of things went by the boards.”"

This is absolutely one of the biggest flaws of the Iraq war made public today. Evidentally, this story had been supressed by some in the past few weeks, but now that it has broken right before the election, it is unknown what kind of impact it will have on both the Bush and Kerry camps.

We all know what I hope: go JK!