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Monday, October 25, 2004

Joshua Marshall quotes the Nelson Report

"Some 350 tons of high explosives (RDX and HMX), which were under IAEA seal while Saddam was in power, were looted during the early days of the US occupation. Like so much else, it was just left unguarded"

The Bush administration has been trying to keep this secret. The explosives are probably being used in roadside bombs and suicide bombs in Iraq. They were under IAEA seal because they are used to trigger nuclear bombs. In other words, because of the invasion, terrorists have their hands on an ingredient for nuclear weapons.

This reminds me of my first post on Iraq, in which I argued that the WMD, which I (among others) thought were in Iraq, implie dthat we should not invade. I think the case is proven. The RDX and HMX were in a known location and yet they wre not secured by coalition forces. Clearly there woul dhave been a low chance of securing gas or biological weapons hidden a locations unknown to the coalition. There is no reason to hope that Zarquawi would be too squeamish to use them. There is little reason to hope that, if there had been chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, they would not now be in the hands of terrorists.

Saddam Hussein is evil, but he was deterable.

I believe that the only thing that kept the invasion from being a much worse disaster than it was is the error in the basic premise for invasion.


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