Al Qaqaa munitions dump is back; BushBot response?

Remember the al Qaqaa dustup shortly before the 2004 election, in which a few reports said that large amounts of munitions had been looted from Iraq munitions dumps, prompting a furious response from the usual suspects who did everything within their powers to support massive Bush administration incompetence? Now, the GAO has weighed in:

The U.S. military's faulty war plans and insufficient troops in Iraq left thousands and possibly millions of tons of conventional munitions unsecured or in the hands of insurgent groups after the 2003 invasion -- allowing widespread looting of weapons and explosives used to make roadside bombs that cause the bulk of U.S. casualties, according to a government report released yesterday.

Some weapons sites remained vulnerable as recently as October 2006, according to the Government Accountability Office report, which said the unguarded sites "will likely continue to support terrorist attacks throughout the region." For example, it said hundreds of tons of explosives at the Al Qa Qaa facility in Iraq that had been documented by the International Atomic Energy Agency were lost to theft and looting after April 9, 2003...

While I appear to have mentioned this here once ("Should conservatives support Kerry?"), I posted several entries about this at the command-post.org and in comments elsewhere. Here's a roundup and another, here's someone else downplaying it and someone else, and here's a link to a (now missing) video report.

TalkingPointsMemo was also on the case: here and posts before and after that.

Oddly enough, the usual suspects appear to be silent this time around. Maybe we should be proactive and seek out their current thoughts.

Iraq · Fri, 03/23/2007 - 10:23 · · Importance: 1