Source: Unit had no orders to search munitions storage

Have you heard about the 380 tons of powerful Iraqi conventional explosives that US forces lost track of shortly after the invasion? Well, check this out (From the NY Times courtesy of Eschaton). Then come back and check this out from the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

A U.S. military unit that reached a munitions storage installation after the invasion of Iraq had no orders to search or secure the site, where officials say nearly 400 tons of explosives have vanished.

Looters were already throughout the Al-Qaqaa installation south of Baghdad when troops from the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade arrived at the site a day or so after other coalition troops seized the capital on April 9, 2003, Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, deputy public affairs officer for the unit, told The Associated Press.

The soldiers "secured the area they were in and looked in a limited amount of bunkers to ensure chemical weapons were not present in their area," Wellman wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "Bombs were found but not chemical weapons in that immediate area.

"Orders were not given from higher to search or to secure the facility or to search for HE type munitions, as they (high-explosive weapons) were everywhere in Iraq," he wrote.

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The point is that these explosives are, in all probablility, being used by the insurgency to kill both American soldiers and Iraqi citizens on a daily basis: we're still finding out how badly the Bush administration botched up--for god's sake, these soldiers just left all those explosives lying there, free for the taking.

I'm appalled that we even invaded in the first place, but I'm also continually shocked and amazed at how stupidly the war's been fought. I mean, the longer the fighting goes on, the more that people are needlessly dying.

Man.

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