BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

October 26, 2004

CONTRIBUTOR ARCHIVES  

Morons, Plus Hubris, Ignorance, Incompetence, and Arrogance

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Donald L Feinberg

Before invading Iraq, the Bush administration knew that a huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, contained nearly 380 tons of deadly explosives.

They knew exactly where this facility was and what was there. But they took no action to secure or protect the site.

Due to the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration and their incomprehensible failure to plan, those explosives have now somehow disappeared (380 TONS! POOF!).

Those explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces. The explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings. The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

There were "only" 760,000 pounds of this material at Al Qaqaa.

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. (NY Times, today)

But: on freerepublic.com, the Republican blog site, I picked up this morning:

"We need to get on this one fast, people. Start smearing the NYT, smear the reporter, and focus on the WMD angle. This could be bad...reinforces the dem media narrative that we didn't plan the war carefully. We need to silence this, fast! WHERE'S OUR SURPRISE!!??!!??"

That's the spirit! Yes, we know who the Republicans are. They don't care enough to even be concerned about what the threat might be to our soldiers.

I'm beginning to learn how to laugh uncontrollably and sob uncontrollably at the same time. I have never imagined, let alone seen in my life, that there could be such a simultaneous, mind-blowing display of hubris, ignorance, incompetence, arrogance, and just plain moron-level " intelligence".

The truth is coming out. It's available to anyone willing to ask a question. An astonishing 48% of the US electorate, it seems, is going to vote for the person in charge. Yet the media still haven't had a "field day" on this kind of information. I don't know which is more tragic.

Donald L Feinberg
Naperville, IL

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION