Huge cache of explosives vanishes from site in Iraq.
he Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.
The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.
In the chaos that followed the invasion, however, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.
Consider that the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material.
The story treads lightly over a couple of questions that leap to mind:
…whether the explosives in question have played a substantial role in the various suicide bombings, car bombings and sundry other attacks in Iraq over the last year.
They also say little about Pentagon pressure on the Iraqis not to report the disappearance of the explosives to the IAEA.
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