al Qaqaa excuse is no excuse

Josh Marshall is the go-to guy on all things al Qaqaa related. He has a report this morning that summarizes the multitude of problems with the "the explosives were already gone when we got there" theory. The biggest problem being that moving that much material in that short a period of time would have required a huge convoy. Administration apologists would have us believe this convoy somehow went unnoticed by the thousands of troops in the area, the hundreds of spy planes flying over head and more than a few military satellites watching from space.

But, even beyond these obvious problems, there is an additional problem. Even if we were to give full faith and credit to this excuse it is still no defense for Bush. Consider that was known long in advance that the materials stored at al Qaqaa would be dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands. If so then why didn't we safeguard the facility as soon as we had access to it?

The earliest report of U.S. troops reaching al Qaqaa was on April 4th. You would think putting a lockdown on the facility would be an urgent priority. Yet I have heard nothing on any effort to do so. Why? Was this just another example of the poor planning that went into this operation?

Things are bad for Bush when even his best face-saving excuse still plays right into one of John Kerry's major arguments against re-electing Bush.