It's quite clear by now that improvised weapons are responsible for
the
great majority of injuries and deaths suffered by American troops in
Iraq
(since the Mission Accomplished banner went up.) Here is what Douggie
Von
Reiman had to say about ammunition dumps ignored by under manned
American
units on their rush to Baghdad:

" The Ammo Dump was cleaned out long
before we liberated Iraq, with some small exceptions. Our
troops removed those exceptions and destroyed them." Unquote.

Here's what the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle had to say
about
those Ammo dumps:

Looting Spree Gutted Ammo Dump
Witnesses say Iraqis blitzed Al Qaqaa after U.S. troops came, left
by James Glanz, Jim Dwyer NYT


BAGHDAD -- Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days
after
American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their
way to
Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even
dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional
security
chief said Wednesday.

The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising
residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly
indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and
later
heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa -- one a chemical engineer
and the
other a mechanic -- and the third was a former employee, a chemist,
who had
come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of U.S.
hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the
Americans
to protect the site, but were told this was not the soldiers'
responsibility.

The accounts do not directly address the question of when nearly 400
tons of
powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime after
early
March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the
bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraqi
forces
removed some explosives before the invasion.

But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the
looting
was the arrival and swift departure of U.S. troops, who did not secure
the
site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it. Unquote.
.............................................................


Question: Should we not thank the people in the top ranks of the
military who had the guts to say we needed more troops to do the job
in Iraq
?

And what does it tell us about Wolfowitz of Arabia who scorned them
for
being so far off the mark ?

And what does it tell us about lies and liars
here at Usenet ?