The New York Times

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The New York Times, following the lead of The Nelson Report, has now posted its story on the looting of the 350-odd tons of high-explosives from the al Qa Qaa weapons facility in Iraq.

The Times story treads lightly over the question of 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.

In its place seems to be an administration version of events in which no one was put in charge of ascertaining what happened to the al Qa Qaa materials, then Iraqis mentioned it to Bremer in May but he seems not to have passed on word to anyone else, then Condi was told “within the past month” but it’s not clear whether she told the president.

If that’s true, you’ve really gotta marvel at the chain of command this crew has in place. The whole thing is “I forgot”, “I didn’t know”, “I didn’t tell anybody”, “It wasn’t my responsibility”, “What?” and so on.

There are even moments of refreshing candor like this line: “Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.”

As I wrote earlier, there are very good reasons to disbelieve this Keystone Cops explanation for what happened. There was a much more concerted effort to keep hidden what had happened here, including pressure on Iraqi officials not to report the disappearance of these materials to the IAEA.

But even if you accept this explanation on its face, I think it’s almost worse.

Think about it …

The explosives at al Qa Qaa were one of the primary — and much-publicized — concerns of non-proliferation officials at the IAEA and elsewhere prior to the war. During and after the war there was apparently no effort to secure the facility or catalog its remaining contents. Then no one realized there was a problem until more than a year later when someone told Jerry Bremer. But he didn’t tell anyone in Washington, or at least no one remembers. And then Condi Rice only found out about it within the last month, but it’s not clear she told anyone (i.e., the president or other principals) either.

Next up, a list of questions reporters should be focusing on …

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