380 Tons of Explosives Missing from Iraq

D

dennis_t

CAGiversary!
Yet another catastrophic screw-up in Iraq, thanks to the Bush Administration's incompetent war planning....

Now tell me how the Prez is making us all safer?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/i...&en=61cf6e1aa29b7871&ei=5094&partner=homepage

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year.

The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program "60 Minutes."

Administration officials said Sunday that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings.

The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the same type of material, and larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.
 
[quote name='RedvsBlue']That's it you've reached PAD's level.[/quote]

You're kidding, right? Questioning the disappearance of 380 TONS of explosive material in a war zone, material that SHOULD have been taken into account in any sort of war planning, is on the same level as an aimless rant telling Democrats to commit suicide?
 
To tell you the truth I didn't even bother reading Dennis T's post. The reason I'm saying he's as bad as PAD is because all he posts is anti-Bush crap, the same way PAD posts anti-Kerry crap.
 
Yes, 760,000 pounds of explosives being used against our soldiers is a non-issue. What's important is who'd you'd rather have a beer with.
 
[quote name='E-Z-B']Yes, 760,000 pounds of explosives being used against our soldiers is a non-issue. What's important is who'd you'd rather have a beer with.[/quote]

I though Bush was a recovering alcoholic. If so, then he really can't have a beer with you.
 
I will readily admit that yes this is a serious problem. That's a lot of explosives that can be used against us and innocent people by terrorists. However, Dennis T, if you say that you didn't post this thread as an attempt to make and anti-Bush statement, you'd be lying.

You know its kind of funny now that I read the article.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. The other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain.
Click to expand...

But remember kiddies, Saddam never was attempting to build WMDs. I know you're going to say something about the UN knowing about it but they were monitoring the facilty, that doesn't imply to me that they had very much control over it themselves.
 
Bush Administration Was Warned About Possible Looting of Explosives But Failed To Act

Bush Administration Ignored Warnings of Leaving Explosives Unsupervised. “A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the I.A.E.A.'s Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa. But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces ‘went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal.’ It is unclear whether they ever returned.” (NYT, 10/25/04)

Kerry called on Bush to secure Iraq from looting
“Yesterday, Kerry took issue with the Bush administration's post-war policies in Iraq. ‘I think they wasted a month,’ Kerry said. ‘They lost a serious amount of time because they didn't have a plan. They have allowed looting to take place that has done more damage to the infrastructure than any bomb.’” (Providence Journal-Bulletin, 5/23/03)

Bush / Administration Played Down Looting at the Time:

Bush Was Unconcerned About Looting. When asked in April 2003 about concerns of looting, Bush said: “The statue comes down on Wednesday, and the headlines start to read, ‘Oh, there's disorder.’ Well, no kidding… But just like the military campaign was second-guessed, I'm sure the plan is being -- but we will be successful.” (Bush, 4/13/03)

Rumsfeld on Looting: “Stuff Happens”. “‘Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things,’ Rumsfeld said. … Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. ‘Stuff happens,’ Rumsfeld said.” (CNN, 4/12/03)

White House Said Looting Was Part of Liberation Process. In April 2003, asked about looting in Iraq, White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said: “Clearly, anything that involves looting is not desirable. It is worth noting that what you are seeing is a reaction to oppression. … It's also a situation the world has seen before when oppressed people find freedom. For a short period of time, these actions have occurred in history. You saw it in Sierra Leone, you saw it in the Soviet Union with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And nobody likes to see it, but I think it has to be understood in the context of people who have been oppressed, who are reacting to the oppression…” (WH Press Briefing, 4/11/04)

White House Said Stories About Looting Were Overblown. Asked about the widespread looting in Iraq, Fleischer said: “This is almost starting to remind me of the stories that said our forces were bogged down, as people watched 24, 36 hours’ worth of people reacting to the oppression from which they suffered. …but there's no question, in the President's judgment, that what's happening is people are finding liberation, are finding freedom.” (WH Press Briefing, 4/11/04)
 
[quote name='RedvsBlue']I will readily admit that yes this is a serious problem. That's a lot of explosives that can be used against us and innocent people by terrorists. However, Dennis T, if you say that you didn't post this thread as an attempt to make and anti-Bush statement, you'd be lying.[/quote]

There is nothing bad about making Anti-Bush or Anti-Kerry posts here as long as you can back them up with some facts. PAD's posts are usually libelous trolling. Dennis_T's post questioned whether Bush was actually making us safer and linked to an article that supported it. PAD likes to sling insults at the Democratic candidates' wives.

To compare the two is an insult to Dennis_T.
 
NBCNEWS: HUGE CACHE OF EXPLOSIVES VANISHED FROM SITE IN IRAQ -- AT LEAST 18 MONTHS AGO -- BEFORE TROOPS ARRIVED

The NYTIMES urgently reported on Monday how the Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives are now missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations.

Jumping on the TIMES exclusive, Dem presidential candidate John Kerry blasted the Bush administration for its failure to "guard those stockpiles."

"This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration," Kerry said.

In an election week rush:

**ABCNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 4 Times
**CBSNEWS Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 7 Times
**MSNBC Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 37 Times
**CNN Mentioned The Iraq Explosives Depot At Least 50 Times

But tonight, NBCNEWS reported, once: The 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives were already missing back in April 10, 2003 -- when U.S. troops arrived at the installation south of Baghdad!

An NBCNEWS crew embedded with troops moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003, one day after the liberation of Iraq.

According to NBCNEWS, the HMX and RDX explosives were already missing when the American troops arrived.

It is not clear why the NYTIMES failed to report the cache had been missing for 18 months -- and was reportedly missing before troops even arrived.

"The U.S. Army was at the sight one day after the liberation and the weapons were already gone," a top Republican blasted from Washington late Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers.

Dem vp hopeful John Edwards blasted Bush for not securing the explosives: "It is reckless and irresponsible to fail to protect and safeguard one of the largest weapons sites in the country. And by either ignoring these mistakes or being clueless about them, George Bush has failed. He has failed as our commander in chief; he has failed as president."

A senior Bush official e-mailed DRUDGE late Monday: "Let me get this straight, are Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now saying we did not go into Iraq soon enough? We should have invaded and liberated Iraq sooner?"

Top Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart fired back: "In a shameless attempt to cover up its failure to secure 380 tons of highly explosive material in Iraq, the White House is desperately flailing in an effort to escape blame. Instead of distorting John Kerry’s words, the Bush campaign is now falsely and deliberately twisting the reports of journalists. It is the latest pathetic excuse from an administration that never admits a mistake, no matter how disastrous."
 
[quote name='PittsburghAfterDark']"This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration," Kerry said.[/quote]

:lol: What a piece of shit.
 
[quote name='dafoomie']Try citing a better source than the Drudge Report, PAD.[/quote]

Be nice to PAD. It's hard to find all those crackpot stories with Drudge.
 
Actually, the stuff WAS there when we got there, we did not secure it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/

The presence of these amounts was verified by the IAEA in January 2003,” he said.

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. The site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
 
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003800.php

Let's note a few more problems with what I guess we should call the Di Rita/Drudge/NBC 'It was gone when we got there' hypothesis.

To refresh our memories, this is the claim that the explosives at the al Qaqaa facility were removed by the former Iraqi regime before the first US troops ever arrived on the scene. That wouldn't make the loss of the material any less dangerous. And it would raise serious questions about why the material was allowed to be dispersed. But it might go some way to mitigating the charge of incompetence since this would mean that the material was already gone before US ground troops were able to start guarding it.

On Monday, the Pentagon gave mixed signals about what the first troops on the scene found. Or rather, an official whom the AP describes as closely involved in the Iraq survey work says the explosives were there, while Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita says they weren't.

Di Rita's claim that the explosives were already gone was picked up this evening by NBC news which reported that one of its news crews embedded with the 101st Airborne visited the facility on April 10th and found no weapons. This was in turn trumpeted by a number of conservative news outlets like Drudge and the Washington Times.

So, let's review some of the problems.

First, military and non-proliferation analysts say that a detachment of soldiers not specifically trained in weapons inspections work and certainly an NBC news crew simply wouldn't be in a position to make such a determination. We're not talking about a storage unit with a few boxes in it, but a massive weapons complex made up of almost a hundred buildings and bunkers.

Former weapons inspector David Albright was asked about this on CNN Monday evening and he said, "I would want to check it out. I mean it's a big site. These bunkers are big and it could get lost in that complex and it may be that they just didn't go to the right places and didn't see it."

In any case, that visit wasn't the first time US troops went to the facility. That happened a week earlier, on April 4th, as was reported at the time. According to an AP account from the following day, the troops made spot visits to some of the buildings and found chemical warfare antidotes but no WMD.

The same report says they also found "thousands of five-centimetre by 12-centimetre boxes, each containing three vials of white powder" which were initially believed to be chemical agents but were later determined to be "explosives."

Like the visit on the 10th, this visit seems to have been far from exhaustive and thus far from conclusive about what was there. Neither visit seems to provide clear evidence that the explosives were gone -- and the first may point in the opposite direction. (Further details about this first visit to al Qaqaa are contained in this April 5th article by the Post's Barton Gellman.)

Next comes the question of whether this really could have been pulled off at all under the circumstances.

As we noted earlier, there's a relatively brief window of time we're talking about when this stuff could have been carted away -- specifically, from March 8th (when the IAEA last checked it) until April 4th when the first US troops appear to have arrived on the scene.

Certainly there would have been time enough to move the stuff. That's almost a month. But this would be a massive and quite visible undertaking. As the Times noted yesterday, moving this material would have taken a fleet of about forty big trucks each moving about ten tons of explosives. And this was at a time -- the week before and then during the war -- when Iraq's skies were positively crawling with American aerial and satellite reconnaissance.

Considering that al Qaqaa was a major munitions installation where the US also suspected there might be WMD, it's difficult to believe that we wouldn't have noticed a convoy of forty huge trucks carting stuff away.

As the LA Times notes in Tuesday's paper, it's just not particularly credible ...

Given the size of the missing cache, it would have been difficult to relocate undetected before the invasion, when U.S. spy satellites were monitoring activity at sites suspected of concealing nuclear and biological weapons.
"You don't just move this stuff in the middle of the night," said a former U.S. intelligence official who worked in Baghdad.

If we had seen something like that happening, it's hard to figure we wouldn't have bombed the convoy, since the US had complete air superiority through the entire campaign. And if the thought that WMD might be on those trucks had prevented such an attack, certainly there would have been running surveillance of where the stuff was going and where it ended up.

My point here is not to say that this could not have occurred. What I am trying to show is that Pentagon appointees like Di Rita don't seem to have any clear idea what happened to this stuff. And in an attempt to push back the story, they're cooking up various theories, most with very short half-lives, that just don't seem credible to a lot of folks who follow these issues.

If you look at the multiple contradictions in the different stories administration officials told reporters over the course of Monday, it's hard not to get the sense that they're caught without a good explanation and they're just making this stuff up as they go along.

The folks who really understand this stuff don't seem to put much stock in what guys like Di Rita and Scott McClellan are saying. The LA Times piece, notes that one of them is former chief weapons inspector David Kay, that notorious bush-basher and left-winger. Kay thinks the stuff was carted off after the old regime was history. Kay told the Times he visited the site in May 2003 "and it was heavily looted at that time. Sometime between April and May, most of the stuff was carried off. The site was in total disarray, just like a lot of the Iraqi sites."


-- Josh Marshall
 
In Iraq, 380 tons of powerful explosives have been looted and may have fallen into the hands of insurgents. In an effort to deflect blame, administration officials are pushing the theory that when "U.S. forces...reached the Al Qaqaa military facility in early April 2003, the weapons cache was already gone." This theory is not credible.

According to an AP report, U.S. solders visited the Al Qaqaa in April 2003 and "found thousands of five-centimetre by 12-centimetre boxes, each containing three vials of white powder." Officials who tested the powder said it was "believed to be explosives." Yesterday, "an official who monitors developments in Iraq" confirmed that "US-led coalition troops had searched Al Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact." Thereafter, according to the official, "the site was not secured by U.S. forces."

It makes sense that the explosives were there when the U.S. solders arrived because, as the LA Times notes, "given the size of the missing cache, it would have been difficult to relocate undetected before the invasion, when U.S. spy satellites were monitoring activity."

It is hard to fathom the utter incompetence of the Bush administration.
 
Wow. Talk about being much more organized from the 2000 election. The Kerry camp has already put out a new television ad blasting bush for the 380 tons of missing explosives. You can watch it here:

http://www.johnkerry.com/video/102604_obligation.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Kerry-Edwards campaign released the new television ad "Obligation" Tuesday. Emphasizing that it is the obligation of a Commander-in-Chief to keep our country safe, the 30-second television spot focuses on George W. Bush's misjudgments that have put our soldiers at risk and made America less secure, including his failure to secure
"Obligation" will run in markets that Bush campaigns in this week.
Click to expand...

Once again, I can't view it at work, so I'll have to watch it tonight.
 
You can bet that since NBC retreated on their story that the explosives were already missing, that Karl Rove and the GOP are panicking.
 
Let's put this in terms even short bus tards like the CAG liberals on this board can relate to mmmmkay?

Let's suppose, just suppose, that all of this happened since the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Now, non-weaponized RDX (Which is more or less white powder with the consistency of a crushed aspirin or corn starch.) is NOT easily transformed into a weapon. You can't put a wire in it and make it go boom. It's a bit beyond something you could do in a basement with hardware store tools but less mechanically demanding than a nuclear program. You'd need a dedicated space though with trained personel and key equipment to weaponize this stuff.

Anywho, beyond the logistics of making the stuff....

380 tons of this type of explosive would require the following to move.

- 1,520 pickup truck loads. Given the size/density of the material a pickup truck the size of a F-150 would hold about 500 pounds of the material.

- It would take about 100 men two weeks to pack, prepare to ship, load, and drive off this material. Even if given all of this material was packed, prepped and ready to be shipped you'd be looking at hundreds of truck loads and days of loading/driving.

- If the stuff was packed up in semi-trucks you'd still be looking at a minimum of 100 Kenmore/Mack sized full 18 wheeler semi's. This would have to be done under the nose of occupying troops, overflying aircraft, satellites and hell... embedded media.

So, you're all going to believe that this site was so wide open that an operation of that size went on, and recently, as opposed to the place being empty since March of 2003. Wow, and you call me dim.
 
[quote name='dennis_t']http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003800.php

Let's note a few more problems with what I guess we should call the Di Rita/Drudge/NBC 'It was gone when we got there' hypothesis.



Next comes the question of whether this really could have been pulled off at all under the circumstances.

As we noted earlier, there's a relatively brief window of time we're talking about when this stuff could have been carted away -- specifically, from March 8th (when the IAEA last checked it) until April 4th when the first US troops appear to have arrived on the scene.

Certainly there would have been time enough to move the stuff. That's almost a month. But this would be a massive and quite visible undertaking. As the Times noted yesterday, moving this material would have taken a fleet of about forty big trucks each moving about ten tons of explosives. And this was at a time -- the week before and then during the war -- when Iraq's skies were positively crawling with American aerial and satellite reconnaissance.

Considering that al Qaqaa was a major munitions installation where the US also suspected there might be WMD, it's difficult to believe that we wouldn't have noticed a convoy of forty huge trucks carting stuff away.
[/quote]

Holy shit! PAD is supporting dennis_t!
 
[quote name='Backlash'][quote name='dennis_t']http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003800.php

Let's note a few more problems with what I guess we should call the Di Rita/Drudge/NBC 'It was gone when we got there' hypothesis.



Next comes the question of whether this really could have been pulled off at all under the circumstances.

As we noted earlier, there's a relatively brief window of time we're talking about when this stuff could have been carted away -- specifically, from March 8th (when the IAEA last checked it) until April 4th when the first US troops appear to have arrived on the scene.

Certainly there would have been time enough to move the stuff. That's almost a month. But this would be a massive and quite visible undertaking. As the Times noted yesterday, moving this material would have taken a fleet of about forty big trucks each moving about ten tons of explosives. And this was at a time -- the week before and then during the war -- when Iraq's skies were positively crawling with American aerial and satellite reconnaissance.

Considering that al Qaqaa was a major munitions installation where the US also suspected there might be WMD, it's difficult to believe that we wouldn't have noticed a convoy of forty huge trucks carting stuff away.
[/quote]

Holy shit! PAD is supporting dennis_t![/quote]

I read it as an explanation as to why the explosives would have had to been moved before troops got there. A very well thought out explanation at that. (I'm scared that I'm saying this but) Good job PAD.
 
We left the site unguarded for almost a month. That is more than enough time for the explosives to have been looted. Also, RDX can be easily used as a conventional explosive. One just needs to have the knowledge of how to appropriately use it. PAD is dead wrong on that count.
 
[quote name='coffman']We left the site unguarded for almost a month. That is more than enough time for the explosives to have been looted. Also, RDX can be easily used as a conventional explosive. One just needs to have the knowledge of how to appropriately use it. PAD is dead wrong on that count.[/quote]

Also it is unlikely that such a large amount of explosive could have been moved between January 2003 -- the last time the materiel was under U.N. observation -- and April 2003. We were preparing to go to war, which started in mid-March, and would have had the country under intense satellite and aircraft surveillance -- if for no other reason than to prove Bush's allegation that Saddam was playing games with inspectors.
 
Iraq has just said that it was impossible for the explosives to be taken before the regime fell:

But as the issue of the missing explosives took centre stage in the final days of the US presidential campaign, some US officials have suggested they had gone before the US-led forces moved on Baghdad.


"It is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime's fall," said Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the science ministry's site monitoring department and previously worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam.


"The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of."


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/iraq_us_explosives
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/i...gin&adxnnlx=1098975745-vzLX9rlwiXfmHedSG89uHA

AGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 - Looters stormed the weapons site at Al Qaqaa in the days after American troops swept through the area in early April 2003 on their way to Baghdad, gutting office buildings, carrying off munitions and even dismantling heavy machinery, three Iraqi witnesses and a regional security chief said Wednesday.

The Iraqis described an orgy of theft so extensive that enterprising residents rented their trucks to looters. But some looting was clearly indiscriminate, with people grabbing anything they could find and later heaving unwanted items off the trucks.

Two witnesses were employees of Al Qaqaa - one a chemical engineer and the other a mechanic - and the third was a former employee, a chemist, who had come back to retrieve his records, determined to keep them out of American hands. The mechanic, Ahmed Saleh Mezher, said employees asked the Americans to protect the site but were told this was not the soldiers' responsibility.

The accounts do not directly address the question of when 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives vanished from the site sometime after early March, the last time international inspectors checked the seals on the bunkers where the material was stored. It is possible that Iraqi forces removed some explosives before the invasion.

But the accounts make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it.

"The looting started after the collapse of the regime," said Wathiq al-Dulaimi, a regional security chief, who was based nearby in Latifiya. But once it had begun, he said, the booty streamed toward Baghdad.
 
Getting more interesting now :)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/

"Russian connection?
The Washington Times on Thursday quoted John Shaw, the U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, as saying that Russian special forces troops, with the help of Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the weapons.

Russian troops’ “main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units,” Shaw told The Washington Times.

Shaw said he had obtained information on the Russian activities from two European intelligence agencies that have detailed knowledge of Russian and Iraqi collaboration.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam Hussein's weapons is still under investigation, Shaw said."
 
[quote name='Ruined']Getting more interesting now :)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/

"Russian connection?
The Washington Times on Thursday quoted John Shaw, the U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, as saying that Russian special forces troops, with the help of Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the weapons.

Russian troops’ “main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units,” Shaw told The Washington Times.

Shaw said he had obtained information on the Russian activities from two European intelligence agencies that have detailed knowledge of Russian and Iraqi collaboration.

The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam Hussein's weapons is still under investigation, Shaw said."[/quote]

You complain about "liberal bias" in other threads, yet you quote a story that has the "Moonie" Times as it's source? Incredible. I'll believe the Russian connection when I see it backed up in legitimate news organizations.
 
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...s/2004/10/27/eyewitness_to_a_failure_in_iraq/

Eyewitness to a failure in Iraq
By Peter W. Galbraith | October 27, 2004

IN 2003 I went to tell Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz what I had seen in Baghdad in the days following Saddam Hussein's overthrow. For nearly an hour, I described the catastrophic aftermath of the invasion -- the unchecked looting of every public institution in Baghdad, the devastation of Iraq's cultural heritage, the anger of ordinary Iraqis who couldn't understand why the world's only superpower was letting this happen.

I also described two particularly disturbing incidents -- one I had witnessed and the other I had heard about. On April 16, 2003, a mob attacked and looted the Iraqi equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, taking live HIV and black fever virus among other potentially lethal materials. US troops were stationed across the street but did not intervene because they didn't know the building was important.

When he found out, the young American lieutenant was devastated. He shook his head and said, "I hope I am not responsible for Armageddon." About the same time, looters entered the warehouses at Iraq's sprawling nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha on Baghdad's outskirts. They took barrels of yellowcake (raw uranium), apparently dumping the uranium and using the barrels to hold water. US troops were at Tuwaitha but did not interfere.

There was nothing secret about the Disease Center or the Tuwaitha warehouses. Inspectors had repeatedly visited the center looking for evidence of a biological weapons program. The Tuwaitha warehouses included materials from Iraq's nuclear program, which had been dismantled after the 1991 Gulf War. The United Nations had sealed the materials, and they remained untouched until the US troops arrived.

The looting that I observed was spontaneous. Quite likely the looters had no idea they were stealing deadly biological agents or radioactive materials or that they were putting themselves in danger. As I pointed out to Wolfowitz, as long as these sites remained unprotected, their deadly materials could end up not with ill-educated slum dwellers but with those who knew exactly what they were doing.

This is apparently what happened. According to an International Atomic Energy Agency report issued earlier this month, there was "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program." This includes nearly 380 tons of high explosives suitable for detonating nuclear weapons or killing American troops. Some of the looting continued for many months -- possibly into 2004. Using heavy machinery, organized gangs took apart, according to the IAEA, "entire buildings that housed high-precision equipment."

This equipment could be anywhere. But one good bet is Iran, which has had allies and agents in Iraq since shortly after the US-led forces arrived.

This was a preventable disaster. Iraq's nuclear weapons-related materials were stored in only a few locations, and these were known before the war began. As even L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, now admits, the United States had far too few troops to secure the country following the fall of Saddam Hussein. But even with the troops we had, the United States could have protected the known nuclear sites. It appears that troops did not receive relevant intelligence about Iraq's WMD facilities, nor was there any plan to secure them. Even after my briefing, the Pentagon leaders did nothing to safeguard Iraq's nuclear sites.
 
The Bush administration is pushing the theory that the 380 tons of explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa storage facility before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Administration spokesman Dan Senor said on CNN that "there's a very high probability that those weapons weren't even there before the war."

For days, this theory has been in direct conflict with a Pentagon official, who told the Associated Press on Monday, "US-led coalition troops had searched Al Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact."

Now, video shot in Iraq by a Minneapolis news team provides further proof that the administration's theory is bogus. After the invasion - on April 18, 2003 - the Minneapolis ABC news crew was stationed just south of the Al Qaqaa facility. That day, they drove 2 to 3 miles north with the 101st Airborne Division. There, "members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labeled 'explosives.'" Some of the boxes were marked "Al Qaqaa." One soldier told the crew: "we can stick [detonation cords] in those and make some good bombs." The following may be the same video as in an earlier post, but I have posted it anyway: http://kstp.dayport.com/viewer/viewerpage.php?Art_ID=159660/
 
Here's some pictures of those explosives from the Right-Wing Minneapolis News Station:

20041028_explosives.jpg


See the picture in the upper right? It says 1.1D which can be any explosive such as:

4 Ammonium picrate, dry or wetted with less than 10% water, by mass 1.1D
27 Black Powder (Gunpowder) granular or as a meal 1.1D
28 Black Powder (Gunpowder), Compressed or Black Powder (Gunpowder), in pellets 1.1D
34 Bombs with bursting charge 1.1D
38 Bombs, Photo-flash 1.1D
42 Boosters without detonator 1.1D
43 Bursters, explosive 1.1D
etc.

I believe this is where Kerry says "checkmate".
 
Blaming it on the troops - that's a whole new low.

This whole incident has been the Bush administration in a nutshell: they completely screwed up, and their first response was to lie through their teeth about it. When that failed, they pass the buck to anyone they can possibly dump it on, including the soldiers risking their lives because of the administrations previous mistakes.

Bush doesn't take responsibility for anything, ever.
 
Et tu, Rudy?

It was just yesterday that Bush was complaining that Kerry was denigrating the troops by attacking the President for not safeguarding the explosives.

No, Mr. Bush, he's denigrating you.
 
[quote name='E-Z-B']Here's some pictures of those explosives from the Right-Wing Minneapolis News Station:

20041028_explosives.jpg


See the picture in the upper right? It says 1.1D which can be any explosive such as:

4 Ammonium picrate, dry or wetted with less than 10% water, by mass 1.1D
27 Black Powder (Gunpowder) granular or as a meal 1.1D
28 Black Powder (Gunpowder), Compressed or Black Powder (Gunpowder), in pellets 1.1D
34 Bombs with bursting charge 1.1D
38 Bombs, Photo-flash 1.1D
42 Boosters without detonator 1.1D
43 Bursters, explosive 1.1D
etc.

I believe this is where Kerry says "checkmate".[/quote]

I was just about to post this. While it's inconclusve if this was the specific material looted the report from the crew that tok this is pretty damning.

'Once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured. They were left open when the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew and the military went back to their base.

"We weren't quite sure what were looking at, but we saw so much of it and it didn't appear that this was being secured in any way," said photojournalist Joe Caffrey. "It was several miles away from where military people were staying in their tents".'

It is unbelievable that if our primary goal was to secure weapons of mass destruction that a high priority site like this, known about years in advance of any invasion, was not secured.

It's a failure of leadership at all levels.
 
Three things.

I'm very disappointed at how quickly Rudy Giuliani became a schill and a hack for the Republican party. He was Time Magazine's man of the year for 2001, and I held a high opinion of him at the time. Now look at him, he's just another Bush attack dog.

I was watching Larry King at work, and another one of Bush's attack dogs was trying to blast Kerry for using this against Bush, claiming that all of this stuff was gone before troops arrived. When confronted with the pictures, his only response was that Kerry's ad was out before the pictures were. Is that all you've got? Also, someone made a very good point that the Bay of Pigs was also based on flawed intelligence, and JFK took complete responsibility and blame for the incident upon himself. Bush is looking to blame everyone but himself. Its like the Homer Simpson quote... "This is everyones fault but mine."

Third, the satellite photos that supposedly "prove" that the weapons were moved out before troops arrived, are the very same photos that were proven to be false when they were supposedly evidence of WMDs.


Its the end of October. Surprise!
 
David Kay was on Aaron Brown's program on CNN tonight, and pretty much slammed the door on Bush. It's quite clear to him that at least in the photos available, the explosives are exactly what people have said they were, and that Bush's excuses are a load of horseshit.

So, as people have said, this is a complete failure of leadership at all levels. Would the right-wingers at the very least admit that the Bush administration has erred, and someone should be held accountable? I would expect that at the very least, given the failure to secure hundreds of tons of explosives that we knew about prior to the invasion is a pretty low bar to be set for a measure of accountability, yeah?

seppo
 
4 Ammonium picrate, dry or wetted with less than 10% water, by mass 1.1D

Not very different from fertilizer that can be purchased at any farm supply location.

27 Black Powder (Gunpowder) granular or as a meal 1.1D
28 Black Powder (Gunpowder), Compressed or Black Powder (Gunpowder), in pellets 1.1D

Black powder can be purchased in at any hunting store in America. It's used for muzzle loading weapons and those who do their own reloads. I know several people that have canisters of this stuff in their basements/garages or sheds where they do reloading of centerpoint or shotgun rounds.

34 Bombs with bursting charge 1.1D

Essentially blasting caps. Which can be purchased through any mining supply company without paperwork.

38 Bombs, Photo-flash 1.1D

Essentially flash bang grenades which are used to disorient and incapacitate people in interior spaces for 15-20 seconds. This is a grey market product which can be found and purchased, though not readily, in America.

42 Boosters without detonator 1.1D

There are several model rocket clubs that maintain members which carry boosters that could be labled as having military value. Stuff like this can be improvised from C and D solid fuel rocket engines.

So much of this stockpile that's listed can be readily made or acquired in commercial spaces in America. Not only that a basement chemist could whip out his Anarchist Cookbook (Which I owned at some point.) and make or improvise all of this from a trip to Sam's Club.
 
Just when you think PAD couldn't possibly rationalize Bush's latest blunder, the man comes through. Bravo!

So you're saying just because this was not the sole place in the world the terrorists could get these explosives, we didn't need to guard it? By your rationale we shouldn't bother destroying any terrorist gun caches we find since they could be bought in a US gun shop.

I guess that's a big comfort to someone killed or injured by a roadside bomb made with these explosives.
 
You're only going through whats in one container in one bunker, PAD. The reporter indicated that there were many such sealed bunkers.
 
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