Help me understand

[Uben]

Here's the problem-I just saw Rumsfeld say we had complete control of the air over Iraq, which we did. By the photos released by the pentagon, it is abundantly clear we knew the exact location of the Al Qaaqa munitions facility. By way of the IAEA, we knew what was at Al Qaaqa. So why in the hell didn't we blow it to smitherines before we entered Iraq? Why leave a weapons cache like that available to the Iraqis and vulnerable to looting? Doesn't make sense to me. If I were sending the troops into Iraq, I would have hit facilities like that hard and heavy right off the bat and take away as many weapons as I could. Yet, it remained untouched? Whazzup wit dat?

[Dark]

1. Name one thing that made sense about Bush's plan for Iraq.

(crickets)

Yep, that's it. Nothing

[babylonsister]

2. No one was worried about weapons caches;

I'm convinced it was all about the oil, which was protected.

[BootinUp]

3. Did you see Frontline on PBS?

"Rumsfeld's War"

They went behind the scenes talking to people who know how the war plan was developed. When Rummy didn't get the answers he wanted from the pentagon, he found a guy who said we could do it with 50,000 troops, seriously. The planning was just plain fucked up. The program specifically talks about what they planned for and did not plan for. You can watch it online at www.pbs.org frontline section.

I saw one interesting theory, I think another DU'er said that we had to go in cheap, or the public wouldn't have supported it. Makes sense to me.

[lizzieforkerry]

4. If we had blown it to smithereens

it would have obliterated Iraq, probably the Middle East and more. 380 TONS!! of this stuff! Less than 1 lb took down the airplane over Scottland. I agree we should have guarded it though

[Uben]

5. I disagree

It would have made a huge hole, but 350 tons of explosives is not that much. It was an isolated area 30 miles south of Bagdad. The atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was equivalent to 200,000 tons of TNT! That is 571 times the amount in these bunkers. It would have epitomized their "shock and awe" statement!

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Right, But Wrong!

Fatman was not a 200kT device. It was much smaller than that. 60kT, IIRC.

However, you're right about the size of the explosion. First, the detonation would not have been instantaneous everywhere for that amount.

RDX and HMX only have about 2500 meter/second combustion rates. That's REALLY fast, but not fast enough for all 350+ tons to go off at once. I guess that it would take about 15 milliseconds for the entire cache to detonate. Remember that a 1 ton bunker buster detonates in about 9 microseconds! So, this distributed explosive would be going off at about 23% of the rate of a single bomb. That's reduces the overpressure wave substantially.

This would be a very large bang, but it wouldn't damage a huge area. The overpressure wave could knock down buildings probably within a 1/4 mile (which is pretty darned damaging), but nothing like a nuclear weapon.
The Professor

[lizzieforkerry]

7. Thanks for setting me straight :)