Good point by Randi Rhodes about the missing explosives

Bush's ostensible reason for going into Iraq was that Saddam had or was about to get WMD (Rumsfeld swore he already had them and that we knew where he was hiding them).

The IAEA was all over Iraq inspecting. They had inspected a lot of sites and had sealed many of them. We knew where they were inspecting, we knew what sites they had inspected and sealed. Including Al Qoqa (or however it's spelled).

So how come - our order of battle for the invasion did not include sufficient troops to secure all the sites on the IAEA's list? Including Al Qoq? How come? If you're invading because you're scared of Saddam's WMD, wouldn't a primary concern be securing all the sites where you suspect he's hiding them? Even if you think the WMD may not be there, wouldn't you want to secure all known sites first? But we didn't. The Pentagon did not bother because Rumsfeld's primary concern was Baghdad and overthrowing Saddam, and he did not want to risk his "small mobile force" doctrine by sending in too many troops. Even though he'd been warned he didn't send enough troops in to secure the country.

So - maybe WMD were not the true reason for the invasion? The Pentagon, whatever it may have said, did not act like it was the true reason.

stephen colbert said something like..

"well john, we were looking for WMD's..it just never occurred to the military to look in an ammo dump..it simply was not sufficiently diabolical..so we inpsected what turned out to be a dog food factory 2 weeks later"

tom pea
http://itsjustcommonsense.blogspot.com/

They could not give a monkey's toss about things that go boom. The more booms, the more justification for their actions for the One-Fodder Units.

It was about the oil. They had to get to Bhagdad to secure the Oil Ministry. That was where the real action was.

That's exactly what I've been saying.

I was complaining day 1 when we invaded because Bush was securing Oil sites instead of potential WMD sites.

Here is your answer as to why those explosives and nuclear materials were not secured.



http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraqi_freedom_d2.htm>http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraqi_freedom_d2.htm



At approximately 6 p.m. on March 21, the elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, specifically the 5th Regimental Combat Team secured the gas oil separation plants (GOSPs), crude oil export facilities and oil wells in the Rumaylah Oil Fields. U.S. Marines from the 1st Marine Division, and U.K. Royal Marines combined their efforts to secure the critical Iraqi infrastructure.

Four GOSPs, a key pumping station at Az Zubayr, a manifold and metering station on the Al Faw peninsula, and the offshore crude oil export facilities had been secured and were critical nodes of the larger oil infrastructure in Southern Iraq. These key facilities gave the Iraqi people the ability to preserve 85 percent of the function of those fields.

The Mina al Bakr export facility was captured intact and in working order. The Khor al Amaya export facility was destroyed during the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, and is currently non-operating. Both facilities are capable of handling 1.6 million barrels per day when operational. After their capture, all six major GOSPs were being evaluated in order to determine what work is needed to make the areas safe to begin pumping oil again to support the people of Iraq.

Six major GOSPs, covering an area approximately 50 kilometers in length, included seven oil wells that have been sabotaged and were on fire. Oil fire fighting crews were to move into the areas at a designated time to snuff out the fires.

Some of the deserted plants were improperly shut down by Iraqis, causing oil pumping from the well to overfill the pumping station’s oil tanks. The oil was seeping around the area and posed a potential threat of explosion if the oil reaches the burning wells.

The 1st Marine Division and the UK's 7th Armoured Brigade engaged the 51st Mechanized Division outside Basra, a battle which raged for some hours. The engagement began with the Marines initiating 155mm artillery fire at 6:25 p.m. local time as multiple AH-1s began to stream ahead softening Iraqi forces. By late Friday afternoon Eastern Standard Time the 51st Mech had surrendered, marking the first time that the commander of an Iraqi division and his deputy had personnaly surrendered to the US. The roughly 8,000 soldiers that comprised the division were secured as enemey prisoners of war.

Although the oil infrastructure was confirmed to have been extensively booby-trapped, the installations were secured intact and US and British troops began clearing the demolition charges. The US V Corps secured bridges over the Euphrates in their rapid advance on Baghdad.