The Agora

The two most recent suicide bombings here and virtually every other attack on American soldiers and Iraqis were carried out with explosives and matériel taken from Saddam Hussein's former weapons dumps, which are much larger than previously estimated and remain, for the most part, unguarded by American troops, allied officials said Monday.

The problem of uncounted and unguarded weapons sites is considerably greater than has previously been stated, a senior allied official said.

As Americans and Iraqis die every day, we learn that they are being killed by weapons stolen from still unguarded weapons dumps. We hear nearly every day that there are enough troops in Iraq. Rumsfeld claims that if the commanders needed more, they would have them.

There are not enough American soldiers here to do the job of finding the weapons and securing them until they can be destroyed, the officials said. A private American company, Raytheon , has been awarded a contract to destroy the weapons, but it will not begin work until December, one official said.

"There are more sites than we can guard," an allied official said. "We are destroying them as fast as we can, but we are finding more and more every day."

One of the largest in the country, covering more than 10 square miles, is near Al Musaiyib, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and is still not adequately guarded, an official said this week.

Last month the Army began patrols of the site, and helicopters fly over occasionally. But it is not guarded around the clock, and officials say they believe that weapons and munitions are still being removed [~] and probably being used in devices that are killing Americans and Iraqis.

Yet most American troops are killed in the area around Baghdad, and a vast cache a arms lies just 20 miles from the capital city, and it is largely open for looting. And, according the article, many weapons will remain in place until December when the contractor hired to begin destroying them begins (yes, begins) work.

So people die--everyday--because a few of our leaders refuse to admit that they were wrong in sending a smaller force into Iraq. That seems a very high price to pay to protect Rumsfeld's ego.
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