MISSING IRAQ EXPLOSIVES NEWS ROUNDUP

Well, everyone's still fighting about this mess. The good news, Bush has managed to put his foot in his mouth over it all. I'll have the vid for you in ThePeteTV shortly, but in a nutshell, Bush told a crowd of supporters that anyone who jumps to conclusions without all of the evidence is not fit for the job of Commander-In-Chief. Which, on any other planet than Bizarro World, would mean Bush was resigning early. Alas, we do live on Bizarro world and that means King George just said something stupid again the difference is, Kerry has taken him to task for it:

Kerry Uses Bush's Own Words to Call Him Unfit
Kerry said the weapons were not "where they were supposed to be, you were warned to guard them, you didn't guard them. They're not secure, and, guess what, according to George Bush's own words, he shouldn't be our commander in chief and I couldn't agree more."[Reuters.com]

There are still some arguments going on as to what the state of those missing weapons is. The Washington Times says in this article that:

U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained satellite photographs of truck convoys that were at several weapons sites in Iraq in the weeks before U.S. military operations were launched, defense officials said yesterday.

The photographs indicate that Iraq was moving arms and equipment from its known weapons sites, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

According to one official, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, known as NGA, "documented the movement of long convoys of trucks from various areas around Baghdad to the Syrian border."

The official said the convoys are believed to include shipments of sensitive armaments, including equipment used in making plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.

About 380 tons of RDX and HMX, used in making such arms, were reported missing from the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility, though the Pentagon and an embedded NBC News correspondent said the facility appeared to have been emptied by the time U.S. forces got there.

The catch is that the ABC News affiliate KSTP is reporting that:

A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.

Here are some of the pics to prove this:


And finally, we have this from Guardian.co.uk:

Islamist group: We have Iraq explosives

A militant Islamist group today claimed to be in possession of a large portion of the explosives that went missing from a munitions depot facility in Iraq.

The group, calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, made the claim in a video broadcast today and warned that it will use the explosives if foreign troops threaten Iraqi cities.

Its video statement said:"Heroic Mujahideen have managed by the grace of God and by coordinating with a...number of the officers and the soldiers of the American intelligence to obtain a very huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility, which was under the protection of the American forces."

Well, this sounds like it's pretty much settled... for now.