In the Oct. 25 issue of The New York Times, we learn that 350 tons of high explosives went missing from an Iraqi military facility south of Baghdad some time after the start of the U.S. invasion in March 2003. These explosives are likely the ones being used now in car bombs and suicide bombings that kill U.S. military personnel, Iraqi civil defense authorities and civilians.

The bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 was made with less than one pound of this stuff, indicating its potency. The explosives, which can also be used as triggers for fissionable nuclear material, were under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency until the pre-war period when inspectors were asked to leave Iraq.

So we race to Baghdad, we secure the palaces and the oil ministry building, we pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein (staged for a photo-op), we declare “Mission Accomplished” (staged for a photo-op), we send the Iraq Survey Group out to scope locations for weapons of mass destruction, President Bush delivers a Thanksgiving turkey (staged for a photo-op), and we fail to secure the bunker with 350 tons of high explosives?

Mohammed El-Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, repeatedly made reference to this cache of explosives in the early months of 2003. Paul Bremer was briefed of the missing weapons in May 2004. Condoleezza Rice has known this for a month. Why are you just finding out now?

Because the Bush administration is desperate to bury information which reflects on its bumbling mismanagement of this war. We had no plan (and still have no plan) to win the peace, and we had insufficient boots on the ground to secure bunkers filled with tons of high explosives. We are most certainly not “safer” because President Bush chose the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

More than 1,100 of our soldiers have been killed in action, too many because they did not have body armor.

Thank goodness that help is on the way.

Jeff Cullen

Graduate Student

Educational Leadership & Policy Studies