Redstate

It a false claim to say inspections were cut short. Res.1441 had a window of time for Saddam to PROVE he was completely complying and he failed to do so. We even extended the inspections because we thought it would help some on the sercurity council to their settle doubts. We finally realized that some on the security council never planned to enforce 1441 although it was adopted unanimously....

Even before the latest round of inspections there was over a decade of inspections....how could a person with reason consider that to be an inadequate amount of time? Just a cover for cowards....

so strange isn't it that those who wanted more (endless) time to accomplish nothing but to allow Saddam more time to manipulate the system are suddenly short on time when judging the success of our troops efforts. Iraq is scheduled to have an elected govn't in less that two years since the first troops hit the ground.

Kerry's Monday-morning quarterbacking is getting more and more ludicrous each day!  

OUR military says the damn things were NOT there!

The IAEA says they "might have been there"

So, John Kerry, CinC-wannabe runs an ad that takes the IAEA "might have been", makes it a positive "they were there", and thus calls our military: (a) LIARS (b) INCOMPETANT or (c) BOTH

The answer, again, is C!  This the same answer Kerry has been giving since 1971.  According to Kerry our military consistently lies, is incompetant, and needs to be put under U.N. CONTROL in order to be effective!!  (or have their sacrifices be worthwhile!)

GOTV for Bush and Kerry can go back to being a part-time Senator!

The troops no doubt did what they were ordered to do. Kerry has not said there was a dereliction of duty on the part of the troops, only on the part of the administration.

Unless you're describing the entire military chain of command as part of the "administration" - that military commanders have absolutely no discretion, no participation in planning or executing not only plans, but adapting to circumstances that arise.

Only if you think of the very bottom of the chain as "the troops" and only if you propose that the administration is issuing orders to every platoon does this response make sense. As it is, there are quite a few layers in between the administration and those "following orders".

I for one believe that we ought to be using this line of attack against Sen. Kerry. Kerry is trying to frame this issue as a Bush Administration failure - but in reality, even if what Kerry claims is true, this was a failure of troops who were in the midst of fighting the war in Iraq.

I really don't understand the logic here.  Even if it's the Bush administration's fault, it's still the troops' fault?  What is that supposed to mean?

If the troops weren't ordered to secure the explosives, and if they didn't have the resources to do so, how could the failure to secure the explosives reflect any kind of troop failure?  

Is everything that goes wrong in a war automatically the failure of troops?  Is every criticism of events and decisions in a war automatically an attack on the troops?

Was Pickett's charge a failure of the Confederate troops, Tex?  Does criticizing that charge automatically equate with attacking the troops who participated in it?

Do you really believe all this, Tex, or are you just touting it because it's (in your words) a "good political hit"?

This attack on Kerry does both of the above.  From everything I've read of his comments, he has consistently attacked the administration.  Not once has he attacked the troops or said that they were at fault.  I guess this line of attack is based on the fact that, at some point after the invasion, there were US troops at that facility.  But the mere fact that troops may or may not have been at the facility does not support the attack against Kerry unless those troops had specific orders to guard the material and failed to do so...and Kerry attacked them for this failure.

Kerry's attack on the admin hits the same theme that he has continually stressed...that there were lapses in judgment in the planning of the mission.  Whatever you may think of this argument, it is disingenuous to try to portray an attack on the administration as an attack on the troops.

"Commander in Chief"

or, if you prefer, 4 words:

"the buck stops here"

1. Did the administration give every platoon order during the war? Thank you in advance for your honesty.
   
2. Would you have prefered commanders on the ground to have treated the war like a bug hunt or like a war? Criticizing them for not stopping to inventory everything and truck it out, and then blaming Bush for not personally flying in to issue those orders is absurd, even by leftist standards. As it is, they didn't find anything in the searches that were made there at the time, nothing with IAEA seals on it anyway.

"chain of command"

Or would you rather wars be conducted with the President issuing every order at the platoon level? Think that would be effective?

Seems to me that Rumsfeld was so gung ho about getting to Bagdad with a lean and mean fighting force he didn't have enough troops on hand to secure the areas they ran through. Bush could have kept this whole mess off his hands if he had just fired Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz when it became apparent that they had no plan for any insurgency.

The problem here is that you want to deal with this purely in black in white terms. It is either the private's fault or the President's fault.

You second question is predicated on two things that we still don't know:

1. That the explosives were still there, and
   
   
2. That 101st or 3ID actually found them

Not everything that goes wrong in war is automatically the failure of either. There are layers of command within our troops. There are generals too. I would ask if Pickett's charge was automatically Davis' fault.

If you are honest, you will have noticed that everything that has gone wrong has been pinned on Bush by Dems, even some of the things that aren't his fault. Are you one of those? If you are, you might as well change your posting name to HowardW.

Obviously, Bush can't be help responsible for every single thing that occurs, but, my god, he has to held responsible for something, doesn't he?

So if it's the chain of command, are you criticizing the troops! How dare you give aid and comfort to the enemy!! (See how ridiculous it is?)

Kerry jumped on a half-baked NY Times article and immediately films an ad declaring that "our boys are getting killed with the weapons George Bush failed to secure". (that's pretty close to word-for-word in the ad)

(1) his contention that "George Bush failed to secure" the "weapons" is baed on the IEAE saying they "might have been there".  

(2) this was pre-cursor explosive material that HAS NOT BEEN TURNED INTO WEAPONS...maybe because good ole Saddam MOVED IT long before we got it!

(3) As others have posted here, if Kerry is going to be CinC like Carter was (remember the disaster in the desert?) then he will just as ineffective

The odds that the material WAS there, and was "looted" AFTER we passed by are VERY NEAR ZERO.  

Kerry continues to claim that as CinC NOTHING WILL EVER GO WRONG!  I would like to know if the Dems on this site will hold him accountable to his self-set standards??????????????

I don't think Bush is short on things he is being "held responsible for" do you? I see it in the news every day. Dems blaming him for this or that. It seems there is quite a healthy "holding responsible" effort underway.

If it is your aim to criticize him, you would help your cause quite a bit by focusing on areas of legitimate concern. For example, closing the borders. Focusing on not securing explosives that probably weren't there makes you sound like some of the more prominent people in the DNC.

As for the chain of command comment, I haven't the foggiest idea what your point is. Clarify how criticizing commanders' performance is giving aid to the enemy any more than critizing the CinC.

My question is not whose fault the missing weapons actually are.  I want to know why Tex thinks Kerry's criticism of the administration on the explosives issue constitutes an attack on our troops.  

As you say, Kerry is trying to pin this on Bush.  He's looking for material to attack Bush with, no question about it.  Perhaps he is right, perhaps he is wrong-- that can be debated, and you are correct that we'd need more information to know the answer.  

But that is not the point of Tex's post, or of my response.  Tex claims that by criticizing Bush on this issue, Kerry is implicitly criticizing our troops.  I say, I don't see how.  

the national squad leader.

From my brief couple of decades as an infantry officer I don't ever recall receiving an order from the president or having him give one of my squads, platoons, or companies a directive. I was operating, erroneously it seems from the learned comments here, that no matter what I did or didn't do the buck stopped in the Oval Office.

What a pity none of my bosses knew that.

Bush wasn't there.  He wasn't in charge of securing those explosives.  Who was?  Our troops.

Kerry can try to frame this as being an anti-Bush issue, but the reality is that if his version of events is accurate (which is at least in doubt), it's the 3ID and the troops who made a mistake.

He is not criticizing Kerry's choice of words. He is challenging the intellectual honesty of the criticisms, i.e. taking something that is likely a mistake (if we assume the explosives were there at the time) made by the troops and using that as ammunition against the President.

I meant that to be a reply to Jake, not your post...

That there were many mistakes, and this is just the latest one. Yes, people are trying to pin a lot of responsibility on bush--the problem is, he isn't accepting any.

The snarky "aid and comfort to the enemy" remark is one I've heard from so many people on the right whenever anyone makes any criticism of the war or the president.

You say that if "Kerry's version of events" is accurate, the troops of the 3ID and the 101st screwed up.  What exactly in "Kerry's version of events" compels this conclusion?

Has Kerry implied that those troops that were on the scene were responsible for securing all weapons at the site?  Has he stated or implied that that was part of their mission?  Can you point me to any quotes in which he does this?

Based on a NYT article that is quite inconclusive, would you accept responsibility for missing explosives, that according to an NBC article, most likely were not there when we arrived?? If you say you would if you were the President, I'll just go ahead and preemptively call you a liar.

No, this isn't the latest mistake "of Bush's".

Great.

Just wonderful.

Have you read either Tommy Franks' or Rifle DeLong's books?

1. Those troops were there, Bush wasn't. If they saw something suspicious, it would be their duty to at least notify superiors, "Hey we found this strange white powder with IAEA seals on it, what do you want me to do with it?"
   
2. I can only assume that you feel that the standing order for any division should have been to conduct meticulous bug hunt and inventorying operations instead of proceeding with the war. If they weren't given that order, then perhaps the commanders of those divisions were in error.

No, of course not, it's not really Bush's fault. And  the Kerry campaign is using it as a club knowing that. But the Bush campaign would do the same thing and they know it. No-one wants a president who grovels every time something goes wrong and says it's his fault.

At this point this particularly story doesn't really even matter. It's just the latest in a long series of events. Events are moving against Bush and he knows it. Karl Rove has a saying, "if you're explaining, you're losing." And I think Bush has been trying to explain a lot lately.

I'll admit I haven't been paying real close attention to exactly what Bush and his surrogates have been saying on the matter, but what I have heard doesn't include a heck of a lot of "explaining."  

The only time I've heard about this (non-)story is when Kerry, journalists, the NYT people, and lefty bloggers talk about it.

Could you please provide examples of Bush or his surrogates spending a lot of time "explaining" it?  and I don't mean a quick answer to a question or two at the WH daily press briefing.

The Belmont Club has a splendid wrapup of the whole missing munitions lie. Titled: "The RDX Problem Resolves Itself"

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

CBS even has a hand in solving the "mystery". Their imbed, CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin, filed a report on April 4, 2003 that clears up most everything!

Wonder why CBS was going to run a 60 Minutes report that contradicted their own reporter who was THERE on April 4, 2003??

btw...the Dems could NOT even come close to pulling off their "throw EVERYTHING at the wall...we don't care if it sticks" without the complicity of the MSM.  In the old days they would have feared the papers and networks would do SOME investiagtion before running stories. Not any more.  "Free Press"?  It better be "free", 'cause no one is going to pay for it anymore!!

Kerry has not criticized those in the field. If you know otherwise, please post a link. His criticism - and the criticisms of others - are pointed at Bush, Rumsfeld, and others at that level.

Here's a speech from Kerry: Paul Bremer, the President's man in Baghdad, and several senior generals have said the administration did not send enough troops to Iraq to manage the aftermath of the war.

I don't see a criticism of "our troops" in that statement.

Your theory explains why his JA is over 50%, yes?

let's face it. That's what is being said here. Maybe the active force and we veterans should just acknowledge our deficiencies and deal with it.

Unless a colonel with 25 years experience in the combat arms gets a phone call from Condi Rice or Don Rumsfeld he just sits there with his thumb up his fourth point of contact. I mean, why would he even think it might be his responsibility to guard a critical site listed to a 10-digit grid coordinate in his OPORD. Those 30+ 10-ton trucks driving through my perimeter? Well George Bush didn't tell me to stop them so to heck with it? Those twenty or thirty suspicious Arabs with the forklift over by the 10-ton trucks? Well, they've been working up a sweat but Doug Feith isn't bothered so why should I be.

Hell, it's a miracle the whole bunch didn't drown during the rains in March 03. They apparently aren't any smarter than a bunch of young turkeys.

If Paul Wolfowitz hadn't been with 3ID driving the lead tank and pointing our targets, they'd still be sitting in Kuwait.

I am so glad to be out of the Army. I didn't know how freakin stupid we all were until I started reading posts here. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. With a military this profoundly retarded the Republic is in grave jeopardy. Maybe Kerry was on to something when he voted to cut the Defense budget.

Can I pay you to just comment all day?

Dude, you seriously rock.

Kerry has REPEATEDLY stated over the past 2 days that "this administration and the President" have totally failed to safeguard these 380 tons of ammunition. Even you must realize it is NOT the job of the U.S. President to physically go overseas to safeguard captured ammunition dumps; that's the mission/responsibility of the military on the scene.

According to first hand accounts, members of the 101st A/B. Div. who were first on the scene did NOT find any weapons which had been sealed by IAEA, thus leading to the conclusion the weapons had to have been removed BEFORE our troops' arrival.

Please keep in mind our troops have found/destroyed 400,000+  TONS of ammunition in Iraq to date. For Kerry to start assigning "blame" for this "missing" ammunition (for purely political purposes) is a slap in the face of all members of the US military in Iraq as being inept and failing in their duties. Although criticism of the US military is a lifelong pastime for Kerry, isn't it?

1.  Of course not.
   
2.  Uhhhh, never said that I preferred the troops do anything.  And please point me to where Senator Kerry ever critized the troops for "not stopping to inventory everything and truck it out"...thank you in advance for YOUR honesty.  

And I don't think the criticism centers on President Bush not having direct lines of communications to the 101st, but rather that there weren't enough troops to do what should have been done.  Whether you choose to buy that argument or not is up to you (frankly, I think this particular ammo dump would have been left behind regardless of whether we had 120,000 or 220,000), but let's at least be honest about what the actual arguments are.

I'm not making a judgment call one way or another on the propriety of Kerry's argument because, quite frankly, I think all of the arguments that both sides are spitting out are complete and utter BS...we're now into the "headline battle" phase of the election where truth and reality don't matter at all (assuming that they ever did in the first place).  

Your argument proves my point perfectly.  Please point me to where Senator Kerry ever said that President Bush is at fault because he failed to give direct orders to the troops.  Now I haven't been following everything he's said as of late, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that he never said anything of the sort.  I would categorize your response as one of those ex-a-ger-a-tions...or, more accurately, a strawman argument (they are easier to shoot down after all, aren't they?).

The argument that Kerry's making (whether you accept it or not) is not that hard to understand, but I know that reality is often an incovenient roadblock on the road of political chest-thumping...so continue as you were.

That criticism would make more sense, but is hardly a smoking gun. Kerry, to my knowledge has not lofted that connection between troop levels and missing explosives. It has basically been accusations of failure to protect and secure the explosives at that site.

Kerry has criticized Bush for a failure (proposed failure because it is looking more and more like the explosives were not actually there anymore) of the troops to discover and protect the explosives. You CANNOT read it any other way, seeing as the troops were there and Bush was not. Even if Kerry omits the phrase "of the troops" it is clear that the troops are the objects which should have been securing the explosives. Saying it is Bush's fault implies that had he done things differently, given different orders to the troops, gone over there personally, ad nauseam, then the explosives would be in our hands today.

The point is that Kerry disguising what is really a criticism of a failure of the troops as a criticism of Bush instead isn't fooling me. It is part of a larger pattern whereby anything that goes wrong in this country, no matter who really is at fault, Kerry trasmutes that fault directly and solely to Bush.

because you just don't have a knowledge base to talk from. If you knew what you were talking about you'd realize that it is exceedingly complicated.

There were 500 critical sites in Iraq. There were, according to the Duelfer Report, 8,900 ammunition dumps many of which were approximately the same size as our own depots at Herlong, CA and Tooele, UT. Hundreds of acres.

To secure the ammo dumps alone, estimating an average of one company per site, would require about 1.4 million troops without their logistics train.

Of course, Kerry is knocking the field commanders and the troops.

And just as obviously, he, like those pushing this story are either fools or hypocrites. We have more than 400,000 tons under control and you guys are wetting yourselves over 380 tons.

So knock off your faux insight and superiority, okay?

titled "Giuliani Shouldn't Get Away with Criticizing Troops." Since he actually did, while Kerry has consistently directed his criticism at the Bush administration, it should be easy to write.

Just for the record, I think it's fair to say that the facts are still murky on this one. So let's not jump to conclusions yet.

that moron a page click I checked the quote:

The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?

No criticism there, is there? I'd fully agree with the statement.

Our issue is that is not Kerry's position. His position is that either 1) they didn't search or 2) they didn't guard what they should have guarded.

1. If Rudy was going out of his way to nitpick troop mistakes, I could understand the concern. He is not. He is talking about the issue that JOHN F. KERRY made a central campaign issue. If JOHN F. KERRY had not made it a campaign issue, trying to blame it on Bush, you can bet you wouldn't have heard one word on it from Rudy.
   
   
2. It is a troop issue. Period. If Kerry wants to bring up a troop issue and disengenuously try to turn it into a President issue, then take it up with Kerry. I'd rather have the candid honesty of Rudy than the sleezy dishonest Kerry speaking points.

I didn't mean to reply to you. It was a reply to Brendan.

My understanding is that Kerry is saying that if the troops didn't have orders to secure the explosives at a known weapons site, that's the fault of the administration, not the troops. It seems to me that Rudy is saying regardless of their orders, suggesting that the troops just missed something that big discredits the troops.  

I don't have a problem with Rudy's quote. But it certainly places much more responsibility for whatever happened on the troops who were there than Kerry's statements do. In fairness to the troops, if in fact the explosives were still there and they missed them... it's a very large facility. And they were, by all accounts, in a hurry.  

That explanation holds up if Kerry posits there is one link in the chain of command and that Bush is micromanaging (or should micromanage) the entire war. As it was, the first goal was to win the war, not conduct bug hunt operations across the thousand some odd installations that might have had weapons of various sorts. And according to reports of roads and allied activity in the area, the facility was as safe as our supply lines until the later date when teams of official inspectors arrived.

And given that, the 101st was there 24 hours and did conduct some inspections per the wisdom of their troop commanders. If a soldier saw some mysterious white powdery explosives, don't you think that maybe he should report it and just maybe the commander on duty might have the flexibility to act? Or are you, Atrios, and Kerry saying that the soldier, barring an explicit order to look for white powdery HMX and RDX, saw it and didn't report it because GWB didn't tell him to look for it?

Geez, the level of intelligence assumed of our soldiers is on par with a golden retriever.

You are just totally wrong. Can you find a Kerry quote prefaced with "if"? No. You can't. He states it as fact even in the face of what we know today.

The grids to IAEA sites were included in the G2/S2 annexes to Operations Orders. CENTCOM issued orders to secure them. That's well documented.

If the sites weren't secured then there are any number of reasons they weren't. First and foremost is the possibility that Kerry and his minions are ignoring: that the IAEA seals had been removed before 3ID arrived (and the affirmative answer to Giuliani's question of "did the search hard enough?"). There could have been higher priorities: like the thunder runs into Baghdad. Or someone could have just screwed up.

Regardless, the responsibility for securing the IAEA sites was met when Tommy Franks issued his execute order.

For a more detailed exposition on this subject go here.

How did they defend the decision to go in with only 140k troops as well as not secure the areas they were marauding through? I remember it was quite controversial at the time that they were just running through the cities without securing them in a mad dash to get to Bagdad.

...cuz he is the man who invented modern war tactics like this. Trench warfare where battle lines move as a contiguous front ended with WWI. You've heard of the Blitzkrieg, right? That is where you blow through and leave the mop up for follow on troops. Not too controversial to those who know a little (and I admit I know a little) about warfare. [Admittedly, there was some concern among some higher ups about the security of our supply lines, however, they turned out to be wrong.] Today's version of the Blitzkrieg was our "shock and awe" campaign. The war ended quickly, and I can promise you more overall was secured through blitzing through the country than by doing the alternative and taking months to reach Baghdad, letting Saddam and his minions (and Russian allies) have all the time they wanted to move things wherever he wanted to hide them.

As for Franks, he is on record being satisfied with the 140k troops we went in with.

If you want to understand the troops numbers then I recommend you read either the book by Tommy Franks or by his deputy, Rifle DeLong.

The decision to bypass cities would be controversial if Douglas Haig were running the operation. But bypassing strongpoints and moving on the enemy's center of gravity has been doctrine in most armies, and in all successful ones, since Rommel, JFC Fuller, and Liddel-Hart wrote their first books and certainly since the Germans decided to take a beach trip in June 1940.

Read In the Company of Soldiers or Boots on the Ground and decide for yourself whether or not your statement about securing the bypassed cities is fact.

Hey, you and Seth need to chill -- I never said the troops were stupid, that's what you (and I guess Rudy) are suggesting anyone who thinks they missed the explosives are saying. I said it's a large complex and their mission wasn't specifically to search and secure it. I think that your suggestion that a thunder run into Baghdad was a higher priority is likely correct. And yes, clearly the troops not finding explosives doesn't mean explosives were there.

The point of my first post, which seems to have been lost, is that Giuliani seems to be  specifically suggesting that even if the explosives were looted post-invasion, it's the troops fault, not the president's, and so Kerry is wrong in either case. Incorrect -- the troops weren't looking for explosives, as Seth is fond of repeating (although they were checking for WMDs); also, there weren't enough to secure every site. Probably what Rudy meant, as I said, is that suggesting the troops didn't see the explosives is tantamount to calling them incompetent. It's not, for the same reasons as given above.

It's not fair to suggest that Kerry is criticizing the troops -- clearly he's trying to make a political point at Bush's expense. You can argue whether it's a valid point (as above with comments about quick-strike invasions being better than slow approaches), but don't hide behind "how dare he disrespect our troops!" knee-jerk reactionism of the sort others are currently pushing.

First, the suggestion that the troops need an executive order to secure a site that has critical material, implies that the troops and their commanders were too stupid to do it on their own.

Regarding Rudy, you appear to be putting words in his mouth. It appears the context assumes the explosives were still there at the time we arrived. Quite obviously if they weren't it is neither Bush's nor the troops fault. Kerry has yet to acknowledge the possibility that the explosives weren't there, so he is assuming at the very least it is someone's fault. Rudy is responding within the political context set by Kerry.

Third, I don't think I said they weren't looking for anything. I have said that their mission was not primarily a bug hunt operation of every site in Iraq. I have also said that they happened to be there at that site, and they did look around, and if someone had found this stuff under IAEA seal, they probably should have noted it to a commander. They didn't find anything and so didn't report it.

In light of Streiff's revelation of the standing order to find and secure WMDs and other material, Rudy's two questions are certainly applicable. He wouldn't be asking them publicly if Kerry hadn't made the issue a campaign issue. If on the other hand, the explosives were gone, Rudy's questions are irrelevant.

Lastly it is a fair comment about Kerry because it boils down to two things. If the explosives were there and disappeared under their noses, it is either:

1. Bush's fault and Kerry is right to criticize Bush, or
   
   
2. The troops fault and Kerry's pubicizing it as a campaign issue is a backhanded slap at them--even if he is saying it is Bush's fault.

We are ruling out #1

First, if you (generically, not specifically) say the administration is to blame for certain sites not being secured you are either a knave (most likely as in Kerry and Sweatin' Joe Lockhart) or a poltroon (nod to Andrew Jackson).

That just isn't the way the military works and Kerry, who I hear served in Vietnam, learned anything from his great Cochin China Adventure it should have been that you don't want Lyndon Johnson picking targets for air strikes.

So the main point is that if the sites were there and were not secured it is first and foremost the responsibility of the tactical commander to carry out his orders.

If you (generically) want to make the case that the troops were never told to secure the sites then the bar is even higher. In fact, insupperable. The IAEA/UNSCOM inspection/sealed sites were included in the the CENTCOM operations order.

Giuliani just asks did they or did they not search? That seems imminently reasonable. And we already have the answer to that. We know with a great deal of certainty that al Qaqaa was crawled over by elements of two combat divisions for about a week. I suspect their G2/G3 staff journals will surface and show the IAEA seals were not present.

I don't want to be pedantic here but a lot of terms are important. There is no such thing as a "search and secure" mission. Missions are things like "move to contact", "attack", "defend", "withdraw", "cover", "protect", etc. The correct terminology here is whether the brigade had stated or implied tasks in this direction. The brigade may very well not have been assigned the task of investigating the IAEA site. The fact that the 3ID's division engineer, see this story, was involved the division's engineer brigade could have received the task. They are the authority on explosives.

Clearly Kerry is trying to make a political point. But he was also trying to make Bush blame the troops for not doing something. As it turned out he has been hoisted by his own petard.

If this ABC story is correct (and given the swings in the story to date, let's wait a day to be sure), Rudy's comments look much less like the political suicide they appeared this morning. Assuming someone saw this coming, it makes sense (from a purely political, not necessarily moral, perspective) to lay the groundwork ahead of time.

So I suppose the question now becomes will the WH indeed blame the troops on the ground? If this was an unusual case of neglect, that would be fair. However, everything I've seen and read indicates that these were professional soldiers doing their job and doing it well. I take the point made in this thread that commanders adapt to the circumstances on the ground and obviously orders for every situation don't come right from the top. It still seems to me that the priority placed upon different goals must be determined fairly high up the chain of command.

Can you debate whether it would have been worth the time and manpower to secure the explosives? Absolutely. If the WH wants to take this path, I'll listen. I rather suspect that the party line will be that someone at the scene screwed up. You'll forgive me if after the frantic blitz of successively more wild theories they advanced over the past few days I don't rush to accept their interpretation this time.  

And as you say, some more time is needed.