Who can keep up?
By Brad Friedman on 10/25/2004, 6:06pm PT  

While I've gotten sidelined a bit on the "Shrub Scrub" story, other all-new all-more-incredible failures of this administration have been hitting the wires. Most notably the 380 tons of explosive material that went unsecured and now missing from Al-Qaqaa after the U.S. capture of Iraq.

Apparently the latest White House / Wingnut line is that this is no big deal, and we don't even really know for sure when these 380 tons of explosives(!) went missing.

Josh Marshall, who's all over this one, shows that not only has the Administration known about this for over a year (only of actual concern to the White House now that the media has reported the story) but contrary to the denials of the Bush Dead Enders, the explosives which the U.N. and the IAEA both notified the U.S. about before the war was indeed found to be there, according to AP after we invaded Iraq:

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

So it was there, and we didn't secure it, and now the White House is stuck in another lie, fib, mislead, failure, disaster...whatever you wish to call it.

The extraordinary thing at this point seems to be that the sheer unprecedented number of failures for a single administration may, in the end, help them cover up all of them! From 9/11 to WMD's to Abu Ghraib to Increases in Terrorism to 9/11 Commission failures to Backdoor Drafts to deadly Flu Vaccine mishaps to Website Scrubbing to Job Losses to Increases in Poverty Rates to Decreases in the number of Insured to rises in Health Costs to Rising Death Tolls to Unsecured Munitions Sites to Insufficient Forces on the Ground to Osama bin Laden both running and hiding...and on and on...Who can keep up with it all?

I suspect, as when America simply became turned off to endless silly (and unproven) allegations of scandal during the Clinton Administration, it's likely America may end up viewing actual disastrous policy failures-- most of which have made America less safe and certainly less better off than we were four years ago --- as more than they are able to process. I know I can hardly process it all anymore, and I'm paying attention!

Will Bush's endless failures turn out to be his trump card in the end? It's amazing to ponder that this may be the very thing that Bush and Co. now have to hang their hat on!

"Bush/Cheney '04: Who Understands Disaster Better Than Us?!"

                 

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