Keepin' us safer
380 tons? Puh. Missing prewar stockpiles of explosives may total 250,000 tons. That's right, 250,000 tons.
Somehow, this is "John Kerry's UN"'s fault.
Among the sites that don’t appear to have been secured was a cache of hundreds of surface-to-surface warheads in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Each warhead is believed to have contained 57 pounds of high explosives.
Peter Bouckaert, who heads the emergency team for Human Rights Watch, said he was shown a room “stacked to the roof” with the warheads on May 9, 2003. He said he gave US officials in Baghdad the exact GPS coordinates for the site, but that it was still not secured when he left the area 10 days later.
The Bush administration has touted the thousands of tons of explosives it did find after the March 2003 invasion as a sign of success, and officials argue that US forces pushing to Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein could not stop to secure every cache.
Critics, however, say war planners should have committed more troops to the task of securing sites or let U.N. inspectors back to help.
Peter Bouckaert, who heads the emergency team for Human Rights Watch, said he was shown a room “stacked to the roof” with the warheads on May 9, 2003. He said he gave US officials in Baghdad the exact GPS coordinates for the site, but that it was still not secured when he left the area 10 days later.
The Bush administration has touted the thousands of tons of explosives it did find after the March 2003 invasion as a sign of success, and officials argue that US forces pushing to Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein could not stop to secure every cache.
Critics, however, say war planners should have committed more troops to the task of securing sites or let U.N. inspectors back to help.
No comments:
Post a Comment