Iraqi depression

Sometimes the news out of Iraq is so bad, it takes a while to overcome and write about it. In a matter of a couple of hours, I've read the following stories:

Ambushed Soldiers 'Heading Home on Leave ':

The bodies of about 50 Iraqi soldiers were found on a remote road in eastern Iraq, apparently the victims of an ambush as they were heading home on leave, Iraqi authorities said today.

Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman said the victims were believed to have been killed about sundown yesterday on a road about 95 miles east of Baghdad near the Iranian border.

Senators Question U.S. Treatment of Iraqi Prisoners:

Two senators said on Sunday they were troubled by a report that U.S. intelligence officials secretly transferred as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months, possibly violating international treaties.
In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has campaigned for President Bush in his re-election bid, warned against violating international treaties that aim to ensure humane treatment of prisoners and civilians during a war.

"These conventions and these rules are in place for a reason, because you get on a slippery slope and you don't know where to get off," McCain, who was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, said.

"The thing that separates us from the enemy is our respect for human rights."

And this from Josh Marshall:

Some 350 tons of high explosives (RDX and HMX), which were under IAEA seal while Saddam was in power, were looted during the early days of the US occupation. Like so much else, it was just left unguarded.

Not only are these super-high-yield explosives probably being used in many, if not most, of the various suicide and car bombings in Iraq, but these particular explosives are ones used in the triggering process for nuclear weapons.

In other words, it's bad stuff.

What also emerges in the Nelson Report is that the Defense Department has been trying to keep this secret for some time. The DOD even went so far as to order the Iraqis not to inform the IAEA that the materials had gone missing. Informing the IAEA, of course, would lead to it becoming public knowledge in the United States.

This has now been reported by the New York Times as well, making it even worse:

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 Saturday. 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.

Still looted as of last Saturday. We've been in the country for over a year now, and we still haven't figured out a way to guard highly powered explosives.

It becomes more and more depressing to read what a mess Bush and company have made in Iraq, and depressing still to think that despite all of this that 45% of the American public want to keep the guy in office.

I think I need a good stiff drink.

*UPDATE* Josh Marshall has more:

As another administration source told Nelson, "What the hell were WE doing in the year and a half from the time we knew the stuff was gone, is obviously a huge question, and you can imagine why no one [in the Administration] wants to face up to it, certainly not before the election."

Another told Nelson, "You would be correct to suspect that politics, or the fear of politics, played a major role in delaying the release of this information."

It's a story that really brings together the adminstration's two cardinal sins: dishonesty and incompetence.