In the New York Times, Terence Neilan reports:

Senator John Kerry seized on a report today that 380 tons of explosives had vanished from a site in Iraq that the United States admits it was supposed to have guarded, calling the disappearance "one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration."

He added that "the incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and put this country at greater risk than we all need."

The chief White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, sought to downplay the threat posed by the missing explosives, saying they represented no threat of nuclear proliferation and that the administration preferred to concentrate on weapons destroyed, not those lost.