LOST: Has anyone seen 150 pounds of commercial plastic explosives, 2,500 blasting caps and 20,000 feet of explosive detonation cord?

They went missing in New Mexico sometime between Dec. 13 and Sunday.

More info:

In a written statement, Gov. Bill Richardson said state agencies have been urged to report any suspicious activity.

“There is no specific threat,” Richardson said, adding that “it is my understanding that the explosives were stolen from a private magazine.”

Rand Corp. terrorism expert Brian Jenkins said such thefts are common, with 1990s figures showing more than 100 such incidents each year.

Several hundred bombings occur each year, most of which have nothing to do with terrorism, Jenkins said. “Most have to do with insurance fraud, organized crime, personal vendettas, extortion, revenge, vandalism and protest.”

Ho-hum.

FOUND: Via AP…

U.S. soldiers in the northern Iraqi desert dug up more than 1,000 aging rockets and missiles wrapped in plastic, some of which were buried as recently as two weeks ago, Army officials said Tuesday.

Commanders in the 101st Airborne Division said an Iraqi tipped them off to the buried weapons, perhaps an indication that residents in this largely Sunni Arab region about 150 miles north of Baghdad are beginning to warm up to coalition forces.

“The tide is turning,” said 2nd Lt. Patrick Vardaro, 23, of Norwood, Mass., a platoon leader in the division’s 187th Infantry Regiment. “It’s better to work with Americans than against us.”

As the sun set, soldiers from the 101st continued to uncover more, following zigzagging tire tracks across the desert floor and using metal detectors to locate weapons including mines, mortars and machine gun rounds.

“This is the mother load, right here,” Sgt. Jeremy Galusha, 25, of Dallas, Ore., said, leaning on a shovel after finding more than 20 Soviet missiles.

The weapons are of primary concern for soldiers in Iraq, where bombs made with loose ordinance by insurgents are the preferred method to target coalition forces.

“In our eyes, every one of these rockets represents one less” bomb, Vardaro said.

Good news.

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