by TChris

The Pentagon's first explanation for the missing explosives at Al QaQaa -- that Iraq shipped them to Syria before the U.S. invasion -- became untenable after a news video surfaced showing that the explosives were in place, bearing U.N. seals, after the occupation began. Now the Pentagon has produced Maj. Austin Pearson to explain that his troops removed 250 tons of munitions from Al QaQaa on April 13, 2003 -- none of which carried U.N. seals. But the news video, taken five days later, shows the now-missing HMX, complete with seals, and Pearson admits that his unit didn't haul away any HMX.

Pearson said his team did not go into bunkers bearing seals, and his appearance, arranged by the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, did little to answer how such a large amount of explosive could have disappeared from a site that may well have been under U.S. military control.

The Pentagon says that Pearson's story shows that the Pentagon had a well conceived plan to destroy Iraq's arsenal. The facts, however, can't sustain the spin.

A number of government officials and weapons experts involved in the postwar weapons search have been sharply critical of the U.S. effort to find and secure material that was considered part of Iraq's massive weapons production program. They say that important, well-known Iraqi weapons sites were subject to only cursory searches as the U.S. invasion force thrust north toward Baghdad and then left largely unguarded.