Great summary of the whole Al-QaQaa thing...

Mr. Kerry Spot has the best summary of all things Al-QaQaa:

The Kerry Spot on National Review Online: "I was only able to catch part of the Pentagon briefing, but the earliest story on it is here. Short version: Major Austin Pearson said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 250 tons of munititions and military material from the Al-Qaqaa munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year.

As we learn more about this story, one suspects that it is not impossible - in fact, likely - that some looters or some future members of the insurgency managed to take some explosive material out of al-QaQaa. It is also very likely that this amount was what you could take out by hand or by pickup truck or other small vehicle, not the 40 truckloads or so that the initial New York Times article was pointing to. On the other hand, as it has been remarked a great deal in the past few days, the entire country was one big ammo dump. Finding explosives is probably the least of the insurgency's problems. Had we invaded with double the number of troops, there still would have been no guarantee that no explosives could have been taken by any looter.

Should the U.S. troops have done more to secure this site? One can make that argument. Does the President, as commander-in-chief, bear some responsibility for this? Well, even though he wasn't the guy assigning the troops to each location, he is the president, and the buck does stop there. So if someone wants to vote against George W. Bush because some looters may have gotten some explosives, that's their right.

Of course, this is war. Anyone who has studied history knows that even the best armies have problems and make mistakes.
Did the New York Times run this story to go after Bush? Well, duh. Did John Kerry grab this incomplete New York Times article because he was looking for a way to attack Bush on national security? Sure. Was his strategy here, first, figure out the whole story later’? Yes.

Was this issue brought to the attention of the Times by Mohammed El-Baradei in order to get Bush out of office, so that he could serve a third term in charge of the IAEA and keep the pressure off the Iranians?

And throughout this week, has John Kerry demonstrated that he puts more faith in the words of Egyptian bureaucrats named Mohammed El-Baradei than the members of the U.S. Armed Forces on the ground?