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

Einherjar,

It appears you are defending the decision of the IAEA to not destroy these explosives. You are free to do that. But I find it very troubling that the weapons inspectors urged the IAEA to destroy these explosives, and it refused. As a direct result of that refusal and failure to destroy these explosives, we are not having to figure out what happened to these explosives, when it happened, and where they are at.

Had the IAEA listened to the requests of the UN weapons inspectors, we would not be concerned with this, because the weapons would not exist.

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.

I'm contesting your assertion that the IAEA had authority to destroy the explosives. (you did assert that right?)

Urgent Warning on Iraqi Cache Issued in 1995

BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 27, 2004

WASHINGTON - 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."

On Monday a spokesman for the U.N. agency said its director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, was preparing a report on the missing material for the Security Council, concerned lest the explosives, which can be used to detonate a nuclear weapon, fall into the wrong hands. HMX, RDX, and PETN are more commonly used to create C4, an explosive that has both industrial and military uses. Libyan terrorists used a pound of similar plastic explosives in 1988 to destroy the commercial airliner Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

In 1995, Mr. ElBaradei was an assistant director of the the atomic-energy agency for external relations. His boss, Hans Blix, eventually took over the U.N. inspections team that was on the ground in Iraq before the war. Mr. Blix argued, in a book published after his retirement, that Iraq lacked the weapons programs American and European intelligence said it had kept concealed. Mr. Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, although he stressed in his report that Mr. Hussein had the intent to restart those programs.

Until this week, the Kerry campaign had used the assessments of the weapons inspectors to bludgeon the Bush administration for failing to substantiate the assertions it presented in March 2003 to justify the war. But yesterday the Kerry campaign launched an advertisement touting the failure to account for the explosives at Al Qaqaa as evidence of the president's incompetence.

The vice president of the American Enterprise Institute for foreign and defense policy studies, Danielle Pletka, told the Sun yesterday, "What is odd to me is that the Kerry campaign is suddenly concerned about WMD in Iraq and Mohammed ElBaradei after years of indifference, is suddenly concerned about conventional explosives in the Middle East." Ms. Pletka is a supporter of Mr. Bush's re-election.

The Bush campaign touted an NBC News report Monday that said the explosives were missing from Al Qaqaa when troops arrived at the facility April 10, 2003. U.N. weapons inspectors visited the facility on March 15 of that year and verified that the seals on the facility protecting the explosives were intact, according to agency's spokeswoman. The absence of the explosives less than four weeks later could suggest that they were gone before coalition troops had a chance to guard them.

NBC issued a corrective report last evening, however, saying the troops who visited the facility on April 10, 2003, did not look for the explosives. The reporter, Lai Ling Jew, who was embedded in the unit that arrived at the scene, said, "There wasn't a search."

"The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad," she said. "That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean, certainly some of the soldiers headed off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away."

On Monday, a spokesman for the American mission at the United Nations questioned the timing of the release of the material on the part of Mr. ElBaradei. Rick Grenell told the Sun's Benny Avni the "timing seems puzzling."

After a behind-the-scenes battle inside the State Department this summer, the Bush administration opted to reject Mr. ElBaradei's bid for a third term as director general of the atomic energy agency.

At the time, Washington was collecting intelligence - disputed by some agencies - that Mr. ElBaradei was providing advice to Iran on how to avoid sanction from his organization for its previously undisclosed uranium enrichment programs.

Mr. al-Baradei has publicly urged the Iranians to heed an earlier pledge to suspend enrichment, but he has also opposed America's policy of taking Iranian violations to the U.N. Security Council. Mr. al-Baradei has announced he will nonetheless seek a third term. Nominations for the director general position close on December 31.

Your conclusions are pretty spurious.

The CBS link, which you use to show signs of 'looting,' doesn't show anything of the sort.

Quote:

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.

These 'thousands of boxes' couldn't possibly be the explosives in question. Why? Because if they were, it would mean that they were still there when we got there, or else we wouldn't have seen them! Which would mean that they were taken after we had already been there, which would actually support my argument.

This was a huge facility with many tons of explosive materials IN ADDITION to the ones which are reported missing. The 'thousands of boxes' you are hinging your argument on could very easily have been there in ADDITION to the explosives in question.

Your quote from Talkingpointsmemo said that the HMX was still intact and there in March. So where did it go? Your conclusions are completely inadequate.

Cycloptichorn

There ARE no inferences that looting took place before the arrival of US soldiers. None. The 'thousands of boxes' are not inferences of looting. This is a major leg of your argument which you cannot support, given the lack of evidence.

I am not jumping to conclusions; I am saying that we lack evidence right now that the explosives were moved or looted, at all, previous to US soldier arrival. There IS evidence that the explosives were there just a short time earlier. In this case, we must assume the truth lies in the evidence we DO have until said evidence is proven wrong, or new evidence arises supporting your case.

The burden of proof lies upon those who wish to make the (rather unlikely) claim that the stuff vanished in the short time period between IAEA inspection and US arrival.

Cycloptichorn

The burden of proof lies upon those who wish to make the (rather unlikely) claim that the stuff vanished in the short time period between IAEA inspection and US arrival.

Einherjar wrote:

I'm contesting your assertion that the IAEA had authority to destroy the explosives. (you did assert that right?)

A fair contest. Here is why I've made that assertion. I have no other basis to claim they possess that authority outside of this article. The implication is the IAEA held the authority, they simply declined to exert it:

Ticomaya wrote:

Einherjar wrote:

I'm contesting your assertion that the IAEA had authority to destroy the explosives. (you did assert that right?)

A fair contest. Here is why I've made that assertion. I have no other basis to claim they possess that authority outside of this article. The implication is the IAEA held the authority, they simply declined to exert it:

From what I gather, the burden of evidence showing the explosives were related to a WMD program were not met.

This doesn't really change anything with regards to the failure to guard the site. It was known that large amounts of high explosives were likely being stored at the site, and the failure to guard the site must be considered in the context of this knowledge only. Any information not available to those who made the desicion, at the time they made it, must be discarded for the purpouses of determining the wisdom of the desicion.

Which leaves the republicans with no defence.

Okay, but what was the "test" to determine whether they were related to a WMD program. Was this a "global" test?

Are you claiming the IAEA could not have ordered the explosives destroyed?

Is the claim that the kind of explosives that were found by the 3rd ID on April 5, 2003, were not safeguarded? Or are you claiming the missing HMX & RDX that were not found at the site, should have been guarded, nevertheless?

The available evidence from the IAEA showed that the explosives were there (The HMX was definately there, the RMX seals were still unbroken though they didn't look inside) as late as two weeks before the invasion.

...just before the invasion the U.S. satellites were allegedly keeping an extremely close watch on all movements

doesn't look good any which way this gets spun