The lead story in today's New York Times is about the missing explosives in the Iraq bunkers at Al Qaqaa. It's also the lead in Talking Points Memo. The U.S. failed to secure in any fashion the Qaqaa bunkers which contained 380 tons of explosives after we toppled Saddam Hussein. One pound of this type of explosives has toppled an airliner.

It's believed that the insurgents are using the explosives in suicide bombs right now. The U.N. had the site under seal and offered to go in after the invasion of Iraq, but the Bush administration refused to allow the U.N.'s I.A.E.A. to go back in. The I.A.E.A. pressured the present Iraqi government on the issue of failing to provide reports about the explosives and this month it admitted that all of the explosives were gone. Condoleeza Rice received official notice of that earlier this month.

If you like rock and roll and musicology, you might want to visit Larry Monroe's site. He's the well-regarded, liberal-leaning D.J. at Austin's public radio KUT at the University of Texas. You can listen to them over the Internet on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday nights. Larry has been around including having been Jim Hightower's sound engineer. He alerted me late last night about this story.

Wasn't it chickenshit of me to end the cartoon with Condi's saying "Hon ... I mean Sir."? When you're the class clown sitting in the back of the class drawing cartoons of the teacher, you do things like this. But then, maybe she says things like "Hon..." .

10.25.04