I should say this ahead of time: I enjoy being the devil's advocate. Whether or not I agree or disagree with the point being made, I like open debate, and enjoy finding the other side of an argument. My mother claims I would argue with God Himself. She's probably right. Some of you have noticed this in comments I've left on your blogs. It's been tough not arguing everything this season, but I have to make an exception today.
Paul Mooney thinks a new videotape is proof positive of something. There are questions that need answered before that conclusion should be drawn.
1) There are 56 bunkers at the al Qaqaa facility. Are the bunkers in the tape the same ones from which the explosives are missing?
2) Are there images of empty bunkers on this tape? Did the reporters see any empty bunkers? Did the reporters visit and video every single bunker? The reporter's claims seemingly contradict the recollections of at least one soldier with them. http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/10/28/225100.shtml. There is also some question as to whether or not the explosives shown in the photos and video are the sames ones that are missing.
3) Are the explosives missing from a single bunker, or more than one bunker?
4) I work for a logistics company. My brother is a 5th generation truck driver. I have some insight into what it would take to move 377 metric tons (about 350 US tons) of material. Max load on a 47' trailer (the usual kind you see on the road) is 20 US tons. That's at least 19 completely full semi trucks moving this stuff. That's a lot. Not to mention, the bunkers shown are not exactly primo loading docks. With skid loaders (aka forklifts) on docks built to trailer height (meaning the loaders can drive right onto the truck), it still can take an hour or more to fully load and secure a trailer. And that's in a modern warehouse working full speed with experienced loaders and lift operators. Manually lifting and loading one trailerful can take nearly a full day, if not more, and a heck of lot of people doing the loading.
The crates shown are marked as 40kg (roughly 88 pounds). This would put 25 boxes per metric ton, or nearly 9500 boxes that would need to be moved. This is no small chore. Seriously. Think of those large bags of dog food at the grocery store--the ones that used to weigh 50 pounds, but are now about 45 pounds, or roughly half of one of those bxes shown in the photos. Now, go move 19,000 of them onto waiting tractor trailers, manually. Get as many friends as you can to help. Do so quickly, in 100 degree heat.
5) The Defense Department has photos of big trucks doing something at this facility before our troops got there (http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041028-115519-3700r.htm). There are also photos of truck convoys moving from Iraq into Syria before the invasion.
6) Why are the boxes labelled in English? That's just weird. I could understand French or Arabic, but English? Maybe there's a good reason.
7) ABC News (http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304&page=1) raises questions as to the amount of material missing. The IAEA report states that only 3 tons were stored at the depot on their January 2003 visit. Sadly, this is a much more manageable amount to steal. You could load this amount easily on one of the two trucks shown in the DOD photo referenced above, and you could do so through a ventillation shaft as the IAEA suggested happened. 3 tons of anything that goes BOOM is still a dangerous amount, but doesn't quite deserve the level of hysteria currently being generated. For contrast, our troops have catalogued and destroyed some 400,000 tons of explosives.
Personally, I think the explosives were gone before the troops got there, and this means (to me) we didn't move in Iraq soon enough.
In the Crystal Reports chat last night, Brian Bischof asked a question about a topic I wasn't aware of:
Q: I know that 2005 will support printing from collections. Will this be as simple as assigning the collection via the SetDataSource() method? Will it cover DataViews? etc.
A: Yes, it will be as simple as setting the collection into the ReportDocument/Table.SetDataSource() method, and it should cover DataViews as well.
Earlier this month, Scott Mitchell wondered how to do exactly this. In CR .NET 2003, the answer is to convert your collection to a dataset, and then use the dataset as your datasource. In Cr .NET 2005, you apparently won't need to do the conversion to a dataset--you can just set your report's datasource to the collection. This is hugely cool, especially for data that do not come from a database (but rather from an XML file, etc).
Also, dataviews will be supported. Again, cool. Using teh CR .NET engine for linking and filtering your report's data is not all that efficient. Now, you'll be able to use a dataview on your dataset, and set that dataview as your report's datasource. Rather than going back to the database each time a user wants to change the report presentation, you can cache your dataset the first time, and just create new dataviews each time the report parameters change. Way cool, and highly efficient in many cases.