Although President Bush's administration has repeatedly said the main goal of the war in Iraq is to disarm the war-torn nation, it was revealed Monday that there are 380 tons of devastating explosives missing in Iraq with whereabouts unknown.

The news is startling, as the lack of information on the location of the weapons means we don't know if they have fallen into the wrong hands and used in past attacks already. It's already a fair assumption that these explosives - unaccounted for since at least the June 28 transfer of power - have been sold or used, in Iraq or otherwise.

The missing weapons tells us yet again that the Bush administration is not following through on its motives and pretenses for keeping Iraq a free, safe nation.

The two well-known motives for pre-emptive war were removing Saddam Hussein and containing Iraq's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. To be sure, the 380 tons of explosives that are unaccounted for are not weapons of mass destruction by the criteria of the warhawk administration. Nevertheless, though, when war is waged to contain weapons, the mismanagement of a major weapons storage facility again presents an intelligence lapse for this war.

In response to this revelation, Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan said that the storage facility these weapons were housed in was not under United States supervision since the June 28 transfer of power. On paper, control in Iraq belongs to the interim Iraqi government, but it's conventional wisdom that the United States is far from relinquishing all interest there just yet.

In regard to these missing explosives, the Bush administration should stop passing the buck. If 380 tons is not a substantial amount of weaponry, assess what is, and mind that insurgents require such weaponry to fund their war on American troops. Such a tonnage is certainly not capable of being itemized at this point, but it would behoove coalition forces to itemize what can be, even if it does fall under the "too little too late" banner of activity.