please.

look at your sources. You are quoting the "Washington Times" here.
Do you know who owns that paper?
Check it out, and make your own mind up if you like that man.

BTW: where is the real october suprise?
Where is Osama?

Pasted to the side of a cave in the Afghan mountains.

THIS YOUR 'NEWS' FOR THE DAY...THE DAY ON WHICH WE LEARN 380 TONS OF EXPLOSIVE MATERIAL DISAPPEARED IN IRAQ AFTER THE IAEA WARNED US TROOPS OF ITS NEED FOR PROTECTION?

YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN SECURITY. WERE YOU INTERSTED IN SECURITY, THIS WOULD AT LEAST CAUSE YOU PAUSE, BE WORTHY OF COMMENT, BUT NO. THIS IS JUST A PARTISAN STOP FOR ONE-SIDED DISCUSSION.

1 POUND OF THE THE TYPE OF EXPLOSIVES GONE MISSING IN IRAQ WAS USED TO BLOW UP PAN AN FLIGHT 103.

AS A MATHEMATICIAN, I'M SURE YOU CAN CORROBORATE THAT 380 TONS CORRESPONDS TO 760,000 PLANES, CAR BOMBS AND THE LIKE.

FIND SOME REAL NEWS WORTHY OF COMMENT....OH, RIGHT...I FORGOT WHERE I WAS....

From Fox News

Kerry was "there to take the temperature" of the ambassadors, said one source.

"If Kerry voted against the congressional resolution and then the U.N. Security Council subsequently voted for a tough resolution, Kerry would look like a real wimp," said one source, who contends that Kerry was trying to weigh the politics of his upcoming vote.

"He didn't want to be out of sync," said this source. Had Kerry voted against the congressional resolution when it turns out even Syria voted for Security Council Resolution 1441 (search) in November 2002 authorizing the return of weapons inspectors, "he would really have looked ridiculous," the source added.

------------------------------------

Yeah, Sen. Kerry wouldn't want to look ridiculous by, you know, making up his own mind...

We've destroyed over 100k tons of munitions and another 120k tons are being readied destruction. The entire country was awash with explosives and you want to carp about 350 tons?

Let me guess...you're saying the statement is vacuous because "it" (the Kerry administration) did not exist and will not exist?

Also...I was wondering if there were still any old Teletype(TM) machines around...you know, the kind that could only do upper case...I guess Dinesh must have one...

Yes, Andy, we should be concerned about 760,000 pounds of explosives that have gone missing. They are not like your basic weapons of war: bullets and artillery shells and the like. They are plastic explosives, HMX and RDX, some of the most sophisticated explosives material ever made.

This material is ideally suited for a wide range of terrorist attacks. For example, it's very hard to detect through the standard airport security measures. It's non-metallic and fairly odorless. A couple of pounds of this stuff can cause a very large explosion. A small amount of this material brought aboard an airplane in the cargo hold, or in a carry-on bag, could blow a plane out of the sky. It's lightweight, it's highly insensitive, so it can be kicked around without it detonating, it can be pressed into a variety of shapes, it is simply ideal for terrorists to use. It could easily be the stuff used to blow up the UN building in Iraq and could be what the insurgents are building their roadside bombs out of.

What's worse, since it is so hard to detect, it could easily be smuggled out of Iraq to just about any place on earth. If you combine it with the radiological material that has also gone missing from Iraq, you'll have the dirty bomb that everyone is most worried about the terrorists getting.

If this were an accident of war, that would be one thing, but it is not an accident. Bush was repeatedly warned about these stockpiles and failed to do what was necessary to safeguard them. Whether it was to spite the IAEA , to perpetuate the reign of terror, or simple arrogance we'll probably never know. What we do know is that with leadership like this, we've made al Qaeda's job much, much easier.

I agree with Dinesh. It's a much more important story than how many members of the Security Council Kerry met with. Which, by the way, is more than Mr. Shark lets on in his excerpt, even according to the Washington Times article from which he quotes.

> They are plastic explosives, HMX and RDX, some of the most sophisticated explosives material ever made.

BS. There's nothing particularly special about these explosivies for most purposes. (The Lockerbie folks weren't especially weight/mass/volume limited.) They're basically C2.

Note that the UN didn't have any problem with letting Saddam keep them and use them to "peaceful use", so it's a bit late to argue that they're special.

And, now it turns out that they were gone before the US showed up....

right, we know andy. everything bush and this administration does is ok. the msm are crooked. you can't trust anybody except the people you like.

rdx and hdx aren't really that bad. everything is ok.

andy:

perhaps you could share some of your thoughts with the interim prime minister of iraq. he seems to think somethings are wrong with u.s. policy. he could sure use your insight.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63772-2004Oct26.html

maybe you can convince him that everything is ok.

Hey, a strawman.

Are explosives dangerous - yes. Iraq is awash in explosives. The US is destroying thousands of tons. (The total is likely to end up over a million tons.)

Dinesh's claim was different, that these explosives were somehow interesting. He's wrong.

And he's also wrong in claiming that the fact that Iraq is awash in explosives is somehow Bush's fault.

Note that these explosives are the UN's fault, so if he's actually interested in them, his ire should be aimed at the UN. However, he's not. He's looking for any excuse to bash Bush.

right nothing is bush's fault. it's not bush's fault in the sense that he personally should have guarded the site. it is his administration's fault b/c this is yet another example, of the multitude of examples, of how inadequately this administration prepared for the post-saddam phase of this war. if you take issue with that, well it appears that you could spin your way out of abu ghraib.

to quote christopher hitchens: "Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation."

andy: what facts support your conclusion that the explosives were gone before the us/coaltion troops showed up?

from andrewsullivan.com, quoting tom brokaw:

"Last night on this broadcast we reported that the 101st Airborne never found the nearly 380 tons of HMX and RDX explosives. We did not conclude the explosives were missing or had vanished, nor did we say they missed the explosives. We simply reported that the 101st did not find them. For its part, the Bush campaign immediately pointed to our report as conclusive proof that the weapons had been removed before the Americans arrived. That is possible, but that is not what we reported."

to be followed by bush's quote today on cnn (taken from a reader of washington monthly:

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not who you want as commander in chief."

classic. up is down, baby!

Keep spinning Dinesh. Some Iraqis are now claiming that the actual amount was 3 tons.

And there's the reports that Russia helped move them out in the run-up to the war.

In any event, Dinesh's argument rests on whether these explosives are somehow interesting as terrorist weapons. They're not - they're not any more useful for that application than C4, which is readily available.

The amount isn't interesting either. Even at 500 tons, they'd merely be a small fraction of what was scattered all over Iraq. We got hundreds of thousands of tons, so is it really a huge problem that we missed a small fraction?

And, there's still the problem, for Dinesh, that some of the folks pushing "Bush screwed up" had the authority to do something about said explosives and did nothing for years.

The UN trusted Saddam with them so how bad could they be?

andy: my argument rests on bush's incompetence for post-war planning. the missing explosives, gone for over a year without any detailed explanation of what happened from the pentagon, is just another example of bush's ineptitude.

today francis fukyama, a leading neo-con, and the economist endorsed kerry. to quote fukyama, “I just think that if you’re responsible for this kind of a big policy failure,” he tells openDemocracy, “you ought to be held accountable for it.”

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-3-117-2190.jsp

for democracy to work, people must be held accountable for their failures. bush's prosecution of the war has been so horribly bungled that many thinking (as opposed to reflexive) conservatives are backing kerry.

as for missing explosives not mattering, 2 points: 1)its clear that in a war situation, something like this will happen--it should, however, be the exception, not the rule. given the lack of credible response from the adminstration regarding this particular matter, and in light of the other major screw ups (e.g. lack of wmd, abu ghraib, not taking out zarqawi), it is becoming very clear that the post-saddam phase of this war was poorly thought out by the proponents of this war; and 2) if the explosives don't matter, tell that to soldiers who are getting parts blown off everyday--its easy for you to say that this or that doesn't matter sitting in front of a computer.

finally, with respect to spin, you still have not answered the initial question put to you: what FACTS do you have to support your conclusion that the explosives went missing before us troops arrived? i suspect that you don't have any b/c i haven't seen them out there. on the contrary, as the facts trickle out (and they must trickle since the pentagon's 14 month investigation is ongoing and they can offer no reasonable explanation), it appears that even a news crew from an american tv crew photographed some type of explosives, although it remains to be determined whether they are of the same type. what the footage does demonstrate is that if the explosives in question were looted prior to the us troops's arrival, the looters overlooked this large cache found by this news team.

http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

what appears clear is that certain reflextive partisans seem unable to comprehend that the bush administration has made critical errors in its post-saddam planning for iraq, and it appears that such people feel that that the incremental evidence that supports this conclusion are nothing more than partisan attacks or msm bias as opposed to facts. so abu ghraib, failure to find wmd, lack of sufficient troops, this latest missing explosives issue are nothing to be alarmed about, but rather proof of some sinister cabal out to get bush. please. andy, get a reality check.

The Economist's editor, Bill Emmott, said

"It was a difficult call, given that we endorsed George Bush in 2000 and supported the war in Iraq. But in the end we felt he has been too incompetent to deserve reelection."

The endorsement adds that

"America needs a president capable of admitting to mistakes and of learning from them. Mr Bush has steadfastly refused to admit to anything."

And if he admitted to anything, the DJs of the crypto-liberal media would go completely bananas with it. (I am almost nostalgic for the days when major newspapers used to have a declared political affiliation.)

Simple question: you have a choice. A president who may have dropped the ball a few times --- but at least knows what the game is about --- or some malignant-narcissist gold-digger who doesn't even recognize a game is being played, and has no evidence of being fit for the job other than his own burning belief he should be POTUS.

Punishing Bush for alleged "failures" is one thing. Electing a complete clown in his place out of sheer spite is another.

astute analysis former belgian. i can see that the information overload has not plagued your analysis. you seem, like our current president, to reduce complex issues to the most simple of tests.

thanks anyway--i'll still vote for kerry. to put it simply, i believe his brain and heart are in the right place.

> it should, however, be the exception, not the rule.

And we know that it's not the exception because the news is filled with stories about other such incidents....

My contention is that 400 tons is no big deal, no matter how those tons were missed. They're a small fraction of the 400k tons that were found and are being dealt with.

And no, those tons aren't special. The only thing different about them is that they were missed.

Yes, they're probably end up hurting someone. That's going to happen unless the US managed to get 100%, and that's simply not going to happen.

Okay, Bush is to blame for the 400 tons (which may actually be significantly less, but ....).

Who get gets the credit for the 400k tons? How do you know that said person or persons isn't at least partly responsible for the missing 400 tons?

Why is Dinesh so confident that anyone can beat 99+%? Or, is he suggesting that if you can't get 100%, you shouldn't do anything?

I don't think that the left appreciates one of the consequences of failure in Iraq. That consequence is that the US military option is off the table for humanitarian activities for at least a generation, regardless of president.

That wouldn't bother me much - is it okay with them?