Up Al Qa Qaa Creek

Yesterday, in a briefing to reporters, Scott McClellan offered some defenses of the Administration on the al-Qa-Qaa matter which, if true, make for a pretty scary picture of this Administration's behavior. So, to look at the substance of McClellan's comments:

1) This issue is important: "When there are munitions missing, it's -- and we learn about it, it's always a priority. And as I pointed out, that's why we've already destroyed more than 243,000 munitions and have another nearly 363,000 on line to be destroyed. "

2) Bush reacted to it: "And the President wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this. Now, the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi survey group to look into this matter, and that's what they are currently doing."

3) Bush didn't know until October 10th: "That's why I said, we were informed on October 15th. Condi Rice was informed days after that. This is all in the last, what, 10 days now."

4) The military did know or could/should have known sooner: "So -- and obviously there is an effort to go and secure these sites. The Department of Defense can talk to you about -- because they did go in and look at this site and look to see whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction there. So you need to talk to Department of Defense, because I think that would clarify that for you and set that record straight"

5) The military did not tell George Bush: "Well, the Iraqi government told the International Atomic Energy Agency on October 10th that these munitions or these high explosives were missing, because of looting that occurred sometime after April 9th, 2003... The IAEA informed the U.S. mission in Vienna first. And then -- and then, as I said, Condi was informed days after that and she informed the President."

This scenario really bothers me, because it would indicate that the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces isn't receiving important information needed to make the command decisions. Whether the munitions were looted before April 9th of 2003 or shortly thereafter, any operation which was able to "loot" 380 TONS of explosive materials would have to be of a size, scale, and sophistication to be obviously worrisome from a strategic point of view. If the President wasn't even informed that operations of this magnitude were being conducted during the war or its aftermath, then the only conclusion possible would be that his own military was misleading the President about the nature of the insurgency it was faced with. Such a datum as the events at Al Qa Qaa should, at the very least, have provided evidence that preparations were underway for a large-scale and widespread insurgency with some kind of high-level command-and-control capacity. That the interrogations of Abu Ghraib, for instance, yielded no clues as to the looters of 380 tons of munitions, nor their whereabouts, would further indicate a failure to make serious progress against enemies whose presence and operations could be reasonably deduced simply by looking at the operation at this facility.

Listening to the "generals on the ground" is all well and good, but that doesn't absolve Bush of his duties as Commander-in-Chief. And if those "generals on the ground" are suppressing information that the Commander-in-Chief needs to hear in order to make informed decisions, then there is a catastrophic breakdown in the chain of command.