THE US, THE UN AND THE IRAQIS THEMSELVES, V. 7.0

Now, not so much.

When CBS interviewed the commander of the unit that visited al Qaqaa with that NBC news crew on April 10th, they heard the following ...

The commander of the first unit into the area told CBS he did not search it for explosives or secure it from looters. "We were still in a fight," he said. "our focus was killing bad guys." He added he would have needed four times more troops to search and secure all the ammo dumps he came across.

This really is the same issue, the heart of the matter: the lack of a sufficient number of troops early on to secure critical infrastructure and facilities. And it seems to be one to which Bremer's given quite a bit of thought.

I know it's not fun to get on the wrong side of your publisher. But somehow I think that's not the only reason Mr. Bremer's staying mum.

Special thanks to TPM reader ADJJ for recalling for me what Bremer said in the Times OpEd.

-- Josh Marshall
(October 26, 2004 -- 10:52 PM EDT // link // print)
The lede in tomorrow's Times story about al Qaqaa ...

White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.
But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the facility and had merely stopped there for the night on their way to Baghdad.

And then there's this ...

President Bush's aides told reporters that because the soldiers had found no trace of the missing explosives on April 10, the explosives could have been removed before the American invasion. They based their assertions on a report broadcast by NBC News on Monday night that showed video footage of the 101st arriving at Al Qaqaa.
By yesterday afternoon, as Mr. Bush made his way through Wisconsin and Iowa, his aides had moderated their view, saying it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared. They said that it could have happened before or after the invasion and that Mr. Bush did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known.

Gelisgesti wrote:

What I am claiming is that you took my post and misrepresented it to read 'WMD' ..... thee author of the post that I quoted made the statement that the dump in question could be found all over Iraq, probably in a weak effort to minimize its importance .... hence my sarcastic comment calling the 'common garden variety'. You introduced WMD, to serve whatever your argument was. (read the original post)
Upset? Wrong? I was neither.
It is a common practice around here to rewrite a post to fit the personal view of the poster and bolster their argument, a non productive practice I might add.

I did not misrepresent your post to "read WMD". I said ...

Quote:

The explosives that went missing are very bad stuff, and this underscores what a bad man Saddam was, that he could not be trusted, and that he had intentions of acquiring WMD.

I never said the explosives that went missing are WMD (although some on A2K would make that argument). I'm sorry you felt I had "rewritten" your post, but I didn't.

Hartford Courant (Connecticut) December 23, 2003
U.S. Attacks Iraq's 'Iron Mountain'

In-Depth Coverage

By Bernard T. Davidow

The scope of the problem struck Marc E. Garlasco soon after he set foot in Iraq.

He had just arrived in Basra on a fact-finding mission for the nonprofit Human Rights Watch to investigate the war's impact on civilians. Around dusk, mine-removal experts took him and his team to a weapons stockpile near al-Maqal Airfield, where the landscape was punctuated by 12-foot-high mounds of dirt -- 13 in all.

Many of the mounds were dug into, exposing side-by-side shipping containers that had been forced open and their contents spilled: millions of rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition, thousands of anti-ship rounds, hundreds of air-to-air helicopter rockets, hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades. The site was awash in pellets of flammable explosive charges called propellant.

Looters had stripped explosive ship shells of everything brass -- a risky procedure -- for sale on the Iraq black market.

The derelict stockpile had become a lethal salvage heap, and it was open for business.

Stockpiles large and small litter Iraq with arms and ammunition, much of it outdated and dangerously unstable. By one estimate there's as much as 2 billion pounds of such material, and experts say it will take years to clean up. Scores of civilians, especially children, have been injured by ordnance left unattended, according to Human Rights Watch.

Garlasco said he realized on May 2 that the problem of unused and unexploded ordnance would dwarf any expectations he might have had.

"I was in Kosovo in '99, and this is like nothing I've ever seen," he said last week from his office in Manhattan. "Sure, there were some ammo depots, but they were all very well contained ... and guys could get to them and clear them. This is on a scale that is beyond my wildest nightmares."
Peril To Civilians, Soldiers

Saddam Hussein's capture reignited the search for weapons of mass destruction, but there are hundreds of thousands of tons of abandoned conventional weapons and ammunition in Iraq.

A half-year after major combat ended, more ordnance is being found all the time: mortars, missiles, bullets, bombs, propellant, mines -- some by the roomful, some by the square mile.

There are major sites, supply points for what was once the world's fourth largest army. Unsupervised and left to deteriorate, unused and discarded ordnance can become unstable and explode. Unsecured, weapons can get in the wrong hands.

But there are many thousands of smaller sites, too.

"The way that Saddam's regime hid the stockpiles of munitions will continue to be a threat for the local population for many years," Roger Hess, a mine-action expert who spent part of the year in Iraq, said in a recent e-mail.

"Both the properly constructed ammo supply points and the ones that were stashed in housing areas and schools have been pilfered for semi-precious metals. As a result of the pilfering, the munitions and propellant are left in a very unstable condition and have already contributed to many deaths," Hess said.

Just how many is anyone's guess. A Human Rights Watch report released earlier this month blames abandoned munitions for "scores" of civilian casualties and documents individual cases of civilians maimed, burned or killed.

Many of the injured have been children. They have been burned lighting propellant and scarred by acid from decomposing missiles left out in the open. One boy brought a piece of ordnance home to use for cooking fuel, Human Rights Watch reported. It exploded, killing four family members.

The weapons caches are a continuing threat to soldiers as well.

Hess said the caches supply the resistance with explosives to make homemade bombs -- improvised explosive devices, in military parlance -- that have been blamed for dozens of GI deaths, including two U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter on Monday.

"Along with that would be the stashes of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades that are being fired at aircraft," Hess said.

Jack Holt, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said soldiers find weapons everywhere, "in old hangers, old buildings, new buildings, buildings in municipal areas, private homes."

"There's very little quality control in the storage of this stuff. It's just stacked all over the place."

No one knows just how many tons are out there, though estimates range from 650,000 to 1 million.

"That's a heck of a lot of ammo. And the problem is, that to demilitarize it will be a major undertaking. Years," said John Pike, a military analyst and founder of GlobalSecurity.org, a website focusing on defense issues. "This is not landmine removal in Afghanistan or cleaning up unexploded ordnance in Kosovo," he said. The challenge in Iraq, he said, is much more extensive. A major decision facing the United States, "is mainly figuring out what you're going to do with this iron mountain."
Gathering It In

The Army is beginning to move the mountain, but it's a dangerous, time-consuming operation, and the troops are just starting to make a dent.

Five contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been in Iraq since September, said Jack Holt, a corps spokesman.

Parsons Corp. is handling overall logistics of disposal; Tetra Tech FW Inc., USA Environmental Inc. and EOD Technology Inc. are doing the actual demolition, and ZapataEngineering is providing engineering and project management support.

Holt said the Army planned to reach a maximum disposal rate of 600 tons a day -- 100 tons at each of six disposal sites throughout the country -- but aren't there yet.

On Dec. 3, for example, the Army took in 660 tons but destroyed only 165.

"They have the capability, but there's always something hanging it up for one reason or another," Holt said.

Weather is a major factor, but so is gathering the ordnance and moving it to the collection sites. The Army has to be wary of attacks from insurgents.

"They try to vary their schedule so the transport of this stuff is not easily detected," Holt said.

If the security situation improves, he said, so will the speed of disposal.

Meanwhile, the Army is setting priorities.

"They are destroying the stuff that is the most dangerous, both to the people of Iraq and to our soldiers," including smaller munitions that are easy to walk off with, Holt said.

"The rest of it is being organized and possibly stored and inventoried for a future determination," Holt said.

Pike, of GlobalSecurity.org, said it was still unclear what the United States was going to do with it all.

"I don't think they have a clue what they want the Iraqi military to look like a year from now," he said, or how they're going to equip it. "That has everything to do with how much they're going to keep around for safe keeping as opposed to how much they're going to demilitarize on the spot."

For instance, Pike said, if the new military is equipped with U.S. weapons, even potentially usable Soviet ammunition will be incompatible and essentially useless.

Garlasco, from Human Rights Watch, said destroying it made the most sense: "You're talking hundreds of millions of pieces of ammunition that you would have to go in and determine whether or not it was still viable."

A lot of it is so old, he said, even the Iraqis no longer had the weapons to use it.

Still, disposal is no easy task and carries dangers all its own. The stockpiles and caches are full of unstable and obsolete ordnance.

Colin King of Sussex, England, an expert in ordnance disposal, said the explosives can be dangerous to move around. Then, once you bring them to the disposal sites, there's the matter of exploding them safely and completely.

"You can't simply doze it into a heap and set it off at the top and expect it all to go," King said. "You have to make sure it's completely demolished. If you get it wrong, then a small explosion may kick live munitions out in many directions."

Then there's size of the undertaking and the wide variety of foreign munitions that demolition teams may never have faced before.

"The word 'unprecedented' is the one that comes to mind," King said.

© Copyright 2003, The Hartford Courant Company

Ticomaya wrote:

Gelisgesti wrote:

What I am claiming is that you took my post and misrepresented it to read 'WMD' ..... thee author of the post that I quoted made the statement that the dump in question could be found all over Iraq, probably in a weak effort to minimize its importance .... hence my sarcastic comment calling the 'common garden variety'. You introduced WMD, to serve whatever your argument was. (read the original post)
Upset? Wrong? I was neither.
It is a common practice around here to rewrite a post to fit the personal view of the poster and bolster their argument, a non productive practice I might add.

I did not misrepresent your post to "read WMD". I said ...

Quote:

The explosives that went missing are very bad stuff, and this underscores what a bad man Saddam was, that he could not be trusted, and that he had intentions of acquiring WMD.

I never said the explosives that went missing are WMD (although some on A2K would make that argument). I'm sorry you felt I had "rewritten" your post, but I didn't.

Make the connection between 'WMD' and 'munition and explosives' for me please.

So, we simply don't know from the given data that the explosives were there or not. And we should be able to figure it out, but we can't yet.

Given that Saddam had such large numbers of explosives laying about (very few of which actually saw use, btw) it seems rather silly that he would specifically move hundreds of tons of explosives which had been sealed for years... and then not use them for any practical purpose. There were much larger stores of explosives which were untouched, why didn't they take/move them?

A much more likely hypothesis is that we didn't properly secure the place and rebels looted it. This is the official line of the Iraqi gov't. It makes much more sense.

But; actually take responsibility for making a mistake? No way will the admin do that, it would be a first!!!

A much more likely hypothesis is that we didn't properly secure the place and rebels looted it. This is the official line of the Iraqi gov't. It makes much more sense.

Care to respond to the numerous ways your argument was shot full of holes, Tico?

Nine years ago, U.N. weapons inspectors urgently called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to demolish powerful plastic explosives in a facility that Iraq's interim government said this month was looted due to poor security.

The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.

Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein's programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.

Instead of accepting recommendations to destroy the stocks, Mr. Duelfer said, the atomic-energy agency opted to continue to monitor them.

By e-mail, Mr. Duelfer wrote the Sun, "The policy was if acquired for the WMD program and used for it, it should be subject for destruction. The HMX was just that. Nevertheless the IAEA decided to let Iraq keep the stuff, like they needed more explosives."

if acquired for the WMD program and used for it

Are you speaking about the 101st? The imbed said there wasn't any explosives there. The 3rd ID that arrived there 6 days prior found explosives, but not the kind in question. Neither group found any HMX (high melting point explosive) or RDX (rapid detonation explosive) under seal. Show me your source that says they did. There are many sources that indicate these particular explosives were NOT found. So I submit that your statement that ...

Ticomaya wrote:

if acquired for the WMD program and used for it

I'm good at nitpicking.

Then nitpick the point that the UN weapons inspectors urged the IAEA to demolish these explosives, and it refused.

Einherjar wrote:

Ticomaya wrote:

if acquired for the WMD program and used for it

I'm good at nitpicking.

Then nitpick the point that the UN weapons inspectors urged the IAEA to demolish these explosives, and it refused.

Ticomaya wrote:

if acquired for the WMD program and used for it

I'm good at nitpicking.

The policy was if acquired for the WMD program and used for it, it should be subject for destruction.

ticomaya Wrote

Quote:

Are you speaking about the 101st? The imbed said there wasn't any explosives there. The 3rd ID that arrived there 6 days prior found explosives, but not the kind in question. Neither group found any HMX (high melting point explosive) or RDX (rapid detonation explosive) under seal. Show me your source that says they did. There are many sources that indicate these particular explosives were NOT found. So I submit that your statement that ...

The imbed didn't say any such thing. The imbed clearly stated that there was no organized search. The commander of the military unit says he didn't have enough men to search, even if that was his job.

Therefore; your argument that they 'didn't find any explosives' when they showed up is completely false. Several links and examples were given to show you that they were false.

...

... All sources knowledgeable sources are reporting that the were still there when the American forces arrived. ...

That is far from an incorrect statement. Read the statements of the commander of the forces that first arrived on the scene and the imbedded reporter.

True. But given that the last IAEA report showed them to be there in March, and there is no evidence that they were removed before the invasion (There were clearly no signs of looting, according to reports), one must assume in the absence of counter-evidence that they remained there until the long period AFTER the invasion when they WEREN'T being closely guarded by the US.

To assume that they WERE taken would be folly; there is absolutely ZERO evidence to support that theory right now. Therefore, the most probable situation is one in which we screwed up.

The burden of proof lies with those who wish to prove that the explosives were gone prior to our arrival; the only available evidence points to the explosives still being there, and therefore, if your contention is that they were not, it is up to you to prove that they were not.

The contemporaneous CBS report, written before anyone knew al Qa Qaa would be a big deal, establishes two important things. The first is that 3ID knew it was looking through an IAEA inspection site. The second was that the site had shown unmistakable signs of tampering before the arrival of US troops. "Peabody said troops found thousands of boxes, each of which contained three vials of white powder, together with documents written in Arabic that dealt with how to engage in chemical warfare." Now presumably those thousands of boxes were not all packaged and labeled with chemical warfare instructions under IAEA supervision, so the inescapable conclusion is that a fairly large and organized type of activity had been under way in Al Qa Qaa for some time.

Then in March, shortly before the war began, the I.A.E.A. conducted another inspection and found that the HMX stockpile was still intact and still under seal. But inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound.

Barring said proof, we must assume they were there.

Cycloptichorn