250,000 reasons to vote Bush out

Apologists for the administration have said that focusing on the Al Qaqaa facility and its 377 tons of high powered explosives ignores the larger picture when it comes to weapons in Iraq. Fair enough, let's look at the larger picture, then (my emphasis):

From the deserts of the south and west to the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq is awash in weapons sites — some large, others small; some guarded, others not. Even after the U.S. military secured some 400,000 tons of munitions, as many as 250,000 tons remain unaccounted for.

That's 250,000 tons, including high powered explosives and surface to surface warheads that we decided not to protect from looters, even after in some cases we were warned to do so in advance.

A defense analyst and Iraq expert with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies had this to say about Al Qaqaa, and I imagine he would expand it to cover all looted facilities:

"There was little military point in securing this particular site during a period the U.S. was rushing forward with limited forward-deployed strength to seize Baghdad before Saddam’s forces had any chance to regroup."

Which proves once again not only that we needed more troops, but also we had no plan for dealing with the postwar realities that were about to unfold.