Okay, about these missing explosives.

I don’t know squat about them. I’m not gonna automatically assume that it was some hideous failure by Bush–Bush has enough hideous failures in my book that I don’t feel the need to go looking for new ones. The man’s a goob. Kerry could publically commit necrobeastiality with dead puppies and I still wouldn’t vote for Bush. (I might consider going Libertarian, in that case, mind you, but let’s just establish as a ground rule here that my loathing of Bush is not up for grabs and move on.) I don’t need more reasons to detest Bush–I have a vast and lovingly polished array–so I don’t really care if the explosives are directly his fault or not. I’ve maxed out my detestation–one more or less isn’t gonna matter. In a weird sort of way, I’m so far gone into despising him that I’m willing to be open minded on this one, because I don’t NEED any more reasons.

And hey, wars are weird. Maybe it’s entirely possible that 300 tons of explosive could grow legs and nobody’d notice. What do I know? I’ve never been in a war. I can spend twenty minutes looking for my car keys when they’re actually in my hand, I got nothin’ to call anybody on, particularly if a really pissed off local insurgency is shooting at them.

But this I don’t understand.

The argument seems to be from the Bush camp that those explosives could have gone missing at any time. Saddam could have moved them.

Okay.

Um.

Like I said, never been in a war. I try to avoid armchair generalling, because I suck at it. You may note that I haven’t been posting about how I’d do Fallujah differently, since I don’t know it from a hole in the ground. I’m no tactician. I don’t think I’ve won a single game of Risk, and I win Civ by having such a cool culture that people join my empire for the love (and the aqueducts.)

But…um….if there was this big pile of explosives there, and I was supposed to be guarding them…I think at some point I’d stick my head in the warehouse and make sure the stuff was there. That might, in fact, be one of my first acts. You know? If 300 tons of stuff was missing, what kind of argument is “That stuff could have been missing before we got there!” Didn’t anybody check? Am I the only one who’s thinking this?

However, I’ve never been in a war, and I don’t know much about the situation. Possibly what seems like absurdly logical behavior isn’t when you’re on the ground–in fact, I’d be really surprised if it was. So there may be a perfectly logical explanation why nobody ever checked. Hell, maybe 300 tons of high explosive fits in a suitcase or looks like a Coke machine or something–I wouldn’t know. I don’t know what 300 tons of the stuff looks like. I don’t know what five pounds of the stuff looks like.

So can anybody explain the logic of this to me? Is “That stuff could have been gone for months!” actually a valid explanation, or is it as bizarre as it sounds? I’m willing to accept that this could be a perfectly rational explanation, I just don’t see HOW.

It sorta reminds me of Abu Graib. It was real easy for me to sit here and say “Dude, if I’m ever gonna commit war crimes–it’s unlikely, but you never know–I sure as hell am not going to take photos and put them on the frickin’ internet!” And…well, nobody was able to explain that one to me, and I’m pretty sure it really WAS stupid, but I hold out hopes this time.

So, err…whassup with that?