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The military should really be taken to task for this whole botched situation. That there could be a cache of very portable high energy explosives that was not closely monitored by our intelligence agencies is inexcusable. That site should have been the first to be completely and utterly destroyed in the 'shock and awe' campaign.

If they saw trucks there, they should have blown them up, and later claimed that it was a radar truck illuminating an aircraft in the no-fly zone. Failing that, those trucks should have been closely monitored, as you don't send Akmehd to the corner bunker to pick up some C4, you send your trusted people to get those explosives for your own military uses. It would have easily led them to vital command and control locations, or to direct evidence that other nations were buying up Saddam's weapons in the pre-war fire sale.

The failure here isn't Bush's, it was the military, and it is this type of failure that comes back to haunt us for decades to come. When were the weapons taken? Who cares; the issue to me is why we don't know when they were removed, why we don't know where they went, and why that depot was permitted to exist into the period of the land war.