I read on one of the Iraqi blogs that the killing of the soldiers is being viewed as a sectarian act, and that it has caused some Shiite tribal leaders to threaten retribution. So perhaps that plays into Allawi's rhetoric.

Here's the link

Yes - see the link I've added above.

By all means, it's our fault, for not providing Iraqi troops with American bodyguards. Is there anything else we can get you while we're up? Foot massage? Mint tea? Balls? Brains?

Kelli, I understand your reaction. But think about what Allawi was doing -- he was specifically deflecting anger away from a Shia vs. Sunni conflict. That is what Zarqawi and his friends are trying to provoke, and such a conflict could easily be fatal to the hope of a stable Iraq. The danger is very real - just read the reaction of the Shia tribes whose members were ambushed.

It's particularly important for Allawi to deflect that right now, because we really are going after the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah. Allawi is doing what he can to keep moderate Sunnis on the side of the government during what will most likely be a bloody and destructive operation in the Sunni triangle.

I am impressed with this man - he sees the bigger issues very clearly and has taken real risks, personal and political, to move Iraq towards stability, unity and representative government.

Alaa has another informative post that explains something I hadn't seen elsewhere. He says that the Latifiya-Yousifiya-Iskandarya "pocket" is connected to Fallujah via a back road. Alaa thinks we should go after thsi area first before attacking Fallujah.

Interesting -- thanks for the links, Praktike.

Daily Kos is ranting that Powell knew about the missing explosives:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/28/1378/0488

Robin,

Regarding your note about the ABC story, The ABC story was a little sloppy in saying 377 tons of RDX. and, I should add, at the end of the article about the HMX.

The numbers from the Iraqi letter to IAEA (rounded):
195T HMX, 141T RDX, 6T PETN ~ 342T(metric) 377T(Eng)

Now, I am not sure exactly what ABC's confidential IAEA docs contain, but the IAEA 27 Jan 03 report only reports on the HMX. In that it notes that prior resumption of inspections, there was 228T HMX and Iraqi's admitted to removing (breaking seals) 32T. This was never found by IAEA and they verify in this report the resealing of 196T of HMX and this matches Iraqi letter to IAEA. Again there was no mention in the report on RDX or PETN.

Now if ABC has doc saying 138T of RDX was found by IAEA to have been removed, that leaves 3T as you note. This would bring total down to 205T (~196+3+6) or ~225T (Eng).

Now, again if the ABC docs are accurate, what I find even more interesting is:

- Why was the missing RDX not reported by IAEA to the UNSC at the same time as the HMX and the smaller amount of HMX missing. Why was it reported separately and confidentially?
- Why didn't the Iraqi Ministry letter to IAEA reflect the correct amount (205T) instead of the previous, 2002 amount (342T)? (Don't they have IAEA records?)
- Why hasn't the IAEA said anything to correct the misimpression of the Iraqi letter regarding the amount of RDX missing?

There is alot to wonder about, including whether the RDX and HMX was in the process of going missing about the same time as the inspections.

Very soon = next Wednesday (November 3) or shortly after that.

Robin, the AP reports that only three tons was what was left are contradicted by the IAEA. It had merely been moved.

But [IAEA spokesperson] Fleming said most of the RDX -- about 125 tons -- was kept at Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located outside the main Al-Qaqaa site. She also said about 10 tons already had been reported by Iraq as having been used for non-prohibited purposes between July 2002 and January 2003.

Doesn't the multiplicity of excuses (it was stolen before, it was taken by the Russians, our troops didn't find it, our troops were too hurried to look for it) tend to weaken the validity of each individual one?

AL wrote (8:52pm):

Doesn't the multiplicity of excuses (it was stolen before, it was taken by the Russians, our troops didn't find it, our troops were too hurried to look for it) tend to weaken the validity of each individual one?

No. Wrong question, presented as a straw man argument.

The right question for news reporters should be, "did we get the story right and is it being presented in a reasonably informative context?" The right questions for the rest of us as citizens ought to start with, "so what really happened, as best we can tell? What parts of the story as recounted are likely true? possibly false, or out of context, or incomplete?"

When a number of different people propose different answers, some speculatively and others authoritatively, it is (should be) a part of this process. Those aren't necessarily excuses crawling out from under every rock. They could be nuances. This is the comments section of a pointy-headed web-log. We are ok with the concept of nuance, right?

The excuses isn't a reference to the media: they're trying to sort out what may well be a confused situation, and to report what various people say. It would be helpful if they would flag those statements that aren't true, but under the rules of faux objectivity, that may not happen.

The excuses is a reference to the contradictory statements and attitudes of the Bush campaign. First there is the claim that the explosives were moved between March and the arrival of American troops during the war, but the evidence offered so far has been way overhyped. (Note, that doesn't mean the statement is false, merely undersupported.) What became surreal, though, is the juxtaposition of

[T]he actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?

with

[He is] attacking the actions of our military in Iraq with complete disregard for the facts

Now, that's funny, because the first quote is from Bush supporter Rudy Giuliani. And the second is from George Bush! So the Bush campaign seems to be claiming that it's not Bush's fault, because it was the military that didn't search, but that it's not the military's fault, because that's attacking the military. Hey, it's that new no-fault C-4 insurance.

I don't think it's absolutely certain, yet, that the looting occurred after the war, but it's looking likely [link includes photos of explosives taken by embedded reporters].

AJL, thank you for the clarification on what you meant by "excuses." Few of us disenchanted democrats are bedazzled by Bush or captivated by his campaign spin. If Blair were running, these issues would be much less difficult, and perhaps we would be talking more about the issues and how to face them. But then I could easily make an analogous claim about my own party's wretched (IMO, obviously) candidate.

Bush and his campaign's sputtering response to the charges isn't of all that much interest to me. Kerry's laser-like on-message speeches and ads on the 380 tons of HE aren't either. Except as the former suggests Bush's difficulty with complex truths, and the latter suggests Kerry's win-at-all-costs disregard for whatever the truth may turn out to be, post Nov. 3.

That there was looting, a lot of looting, post invasion isn't at issue, and hasn't been since March 2003. That, however, wasn't the charge the NYT et alia made. My comment on that video is on another thread here.

Latifiya-Yousifiya-Iskandarya.
That's where the Black Watch are moving to, correct? And also where British hostage Ken Bigley was killed?
I wonder if Mr Blair hopes to send Zarqawi Britains best and very personal regards delivered by hand-of-Jock?

'When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind'