No blame to Col. Anderson and his unit. They had a specific mission to do and it wasn’t to safeguard a site that they knew nothing about. But it puts the whole “it was gone when we got there” nonsense into clear relief. Unwilling to admit to even minor tactical mistakes on the battlefield, the Administration is willing to tell bald-faced lies to cover its ass.
It is hard to say whether the Administration is actually at fault for the looting of Al QaQaa. I tend to believe that they are, but a reasonable case can be made that there was too much ground to cover and too many sites to secure and too many things that can go wrong that every mistake can’t be second guessed without the appearance of partisan sniping. Even so, this is hardly the first time insufficient troop strength has led to increased danger for our soldiers and for the mission. It is hardly the first time the Administration has been caught hiding the ball about tactical mistakes. And it is hardly the first time that the Administration has rushed to the press with an easily falsifiable refutation of its argument solely to get an excuse on record before the end of the news cycle.
Once again, reality has caught up with the Administration and it isn’t any less “real” because the New York Times broke the story.
This leads to a separate point that I first made in asphnxma’s comments section. I think more damage has been done to political discourse in this country by the Right’s relentless accusations of bias in the mainstream media than by any single political or legislative act undertaken by Reagan, Bush41 or Bush43. The “liberal media” is the only indepent source of information with a wide enough reach to actually apprise people of the facts. With nothing but overtly partisan sources to fill the vacuum of distrust fomented by mainstream conservatives (and to a lesser extent, but with no less malice intended, far leftists like Pacifica) we end up with silly “who is the source” arguments instead of analysis of the facts.
Which brings us back to Al QaQaa. Short story: The Administration was aware of Al QaQaa’s location and its contents. It did not make any effort to protect the site at the inception of the war. It sent insufficient troops into battle to adequately achieve its own stated war goals, which certainly should have included securing known caches of powerful explosives. It has no fucking idea when the 380 tons of RDX and HMX went missing, but is willing to state - with no evidence whatsoever - that the building was looted before they could do anything about it. This is not an Administration desrving of our trust on November 2.
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The Army talks to the New York Times?
