Munitions aren't always one ton each.
(2nd update: sigh. Nevermind. I was wrong, and ABC's quote was wrong.
The NYT has a fuller McClellan quote. Go to Winning
Argument for a better line of attack.)
Ho boy. In an attempted defense of the Bush regime's failure to guard
380 (American) tons of high explosives (about 350 metric tons),
Blue Gene, commenting at Red State says:
The Administration claims that it has destroyed 243,000 tons of
munitions and secured another 163,000 tons. CBS News supplied the
information to the New York Times according to the following
clarification on the Times' website.
[...]
So against the 406,000 tons of munitions the coalition has either
secured or destroyed, Kerry is claiming "vast incompetence" and "great
blunders" over 380 tons, or less than ONE ONE THOUSANDTH or 1/10th of
1% of the total?
I would like to point out that ABC reports that those are
actually munitions secured and destroyed, not tons of explosives.
"We have destroyed more than 243,000 munitions," [Scott McClellan]
said. "We've secured another nearly 163,000 that will be destroyed."
So the math Blue Gene uses is... not so convincing. After all, the bomb
that blew up Pan Am 103 used less than a pound of the type of explosive
missing from the al Qaqaa depot. 380 tons actually means an awful lot
of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), not just, say, 380.
(update: Winning Argument takes a slightly different tack, but uses
a direct quote from McClellan.)
