Tons of Explosives Missing in Iraq

You figure it would be easier to move 38 truck loads of explosives before or after US military was in control?

Well almost, kinda sorta, somewhat Kicky.

And ehbeth, perhaps, but that is not the way I'm getting the story listening to multiple sources late this afternoon and evening. The facility had been hit during the invasion and there was damage. They did do a search--they WERE looking for WMD. They did not find/see any special seals on the stuff that was there. Based on their search the facility was designated a second tier priority for security--the munitions present were of the same type that were in abundance all over Iraq and of no serious concern if looted. That would not have been the case had the heavy explosive been there.

First tier security went to the heavy duty stuff, securing the oil wells to prevent sabotage as we had in Kuwait, etc. etc. etc.

Iraq is a large country and there's a lot of stuff there. We could have pull every active duty service person and reserves/guard that we had and put them in Iraq plus the coalition troops and there still would not have been enough people to guard everything. So you prioritize.

I believe the convention wisdom decided by the administration, th emilitary, and the responsible media at this time is that the heavy explosives were not there at the time of the invasion.

That won't stop the Kerry campaign and/or Bush haters from attempting to exploit it. I believe it will backfire on them if they continue to do so however.

Or, you use the 200,000 soldiers you were told would be necessary to do the job right.

And, I have no idea (well, okay, perhaps a small clue) where you are getting your news, cause that isn't at all what I'm hearing, Foxy.

Foxfyre - I think it'll backfire, too. Especially for the NYTimes (bigger than Jayson Blair).

Squinney, I get my news from our local news radio, an ABC affiliate, CNN, Fox, and chatter on the internet with links. If you get most of your news from anti-Bush liberal news outlets, you will hear the spin that is attempting to embarass the president.

Right!

And you are so interested in trying to help them avoid this "mistake" that you are warning them about the counterproductivity of their efforts rather than sitting back and watching them shoot themselves in the foot!!!! (He said sarcastically!)

The Bush administration screwed up in goddam near every aspect of this misadventure. (and in almost everything else they've "handled"..and my bet is that the majority of the American public are going to see them for the incompetent boobs they are and throw them out on their asses next Tuesday.

We'll see.

The whole essay below

About Those Lost Weapons...

By James K. Glassman Published 10/27/2004


So the Democrats, with help from the New York Times, have produced their October Surprise. What a dud!

In fact, the story the Times reported Monday gives enormous support to President Bush's rationale for invading Iraq in the first place.


The Times breathlessly reported that nearly 400 tons of explosives, part of Saddam Hussein's old weapons program, had disappeared from an installation south of Baghdad. The implication was that the Bush Administration was at fault for not securing the cache. Because the president skimped on troops, goes this reasoning, there were not enough U.S. soldiers to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles. Those weapons could now be used against Americans here at home.


The Kerry campaign has been flogging the story like crazy, and an ad is being prepared, which has Kerry accusing Bush of failing "to secure 380 tons of deadly explosives, the kind used for…terrorist bombings. His Iraq misjudgments…make our country less secure."


John Edwards noted on the trail that one pound of the explosives is enough to bring down an airliner.


Apparently, the Times scooped CBS TV's "60 Minutes," which had planned to run the story on the Sunday before the election. The source had peddled the tale to both outlets, and the New York Times rushed it into print.


As it turns out, it's not much of a story. First of all, the administration didn't screw up. It seems the weapons may have been gone when we got to Baghdad.


Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported Monday night that his network was right there, on the spot, when the 101st Airborne got to the installation south of Iraq's capital on April 10, 2003. "But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives called HMX and RDX" said Miklaszewski.


Then on Tuesday Miklaszewski provided more details. He reported that the 101st airborne troops "were not actively involved in the search for any weapons" and that, given the size of the Al Qaqaa facility, it's unclear if the 101st was "near the bunkers that reportedly contained the HMX and RDX." But he went on to say that "in March, shortly before the war began, the [International Atomic Energy Agency] conducted another inspection and … inspectors were unable to inspect the RDX stockpile and could not verify that the RDX was still at the compound." It seems some of the missing materials were moved even before Americans set foot in Iraq - right under the UN's nose! Pentagon officials have speculated that Saddam could have ordered the materials moved before the invasion by coalition forces.


But far more important, Kerry's complaints about Bush only enforce Bush's reason for invading Iraq. Think about it.


Kerry and Edwards say that Bush didn't do enough to prevent the disappearance of the explosives, which could be used against Americans here at home. But the very existence of such explosives -- whether defined as weapons of mass destruction or not -- was the reason Bush led the nation into Iraq in the first place.


Why did we invade Iraq? Specifically, so dangerous weapons would not be used
against us here at home -- either by Saddam Hussein's forces or by his terrorist friends. Did we miss some of these weapons? Of course. But we got a lot more than we would have gotten if we had not gone into Iraq in the first place.


If we had followed Kerry's strategy, Iraq today would have far more than 380 tons of explosives to use against us.


Last Sunday, the Washington Post buried a remarkable article by Bob Woodward that listed 22 questions that the nation's top investigative reporter wanted to ask Kerry. The questions, Woodward wrote, were "based entirely on Bush's actions leading up to the war and how Kerry might have responded in the same situations."


Woodward began seeking the interview in June. He had already spent three and a half hours with the president. At first, Kerry's aides said the interview would happen, but, after months of stringing Woodward along, Kerry changed his mind. "The senator and his campaign have since decided not to do the interview, though his advisers say Kerry would have strong and compelling answers," wrote Woodward.

We'll just have to take Kerry's word for it.


The truth, however, is that Kerry has never offered an alternative strategy for Iraq, except to say that he would work more closely with France and Germany, countries that were not going to hold Saddam to account under any circumstances.


Now, as a result of his exploitation of the questionable New York Times story, we know a bit more. The clear implication is that, in a Kerry administration, the 380 tons of weapons would not have been lost; they would have been secured -- even without an invasion. A miracle!

http://www.techcentralstation.com/102704C.html

Frank, you forgot to call him a moron. :wink:

From several news sources, the NYTimes and others, it appears likely that the explosives were removed from the bunkers in the week prior to the invasion and dispersed under camouflage in the immediate vicinity. The Iraqi's after their experience with US bunker busting bombs in 91' had a policy of removing high value resources from bunkers and hiding them. If this is the case they would have been available for immediate looting in the aftermath of the occupation. The Bush administration knew that arsenal contained a significant store of explosives. They knew that in was being monitored by the UN. It should have been secured the moment it was occupied.

Am I missing something here? There is no way the Iraqis, under U.S. fire, removed almost 400 tons of anything from anywhere in the first 24 hours of the war. So if they moved the stuff prior to the invasion, the U.S. should still have secured that one particular facility in the first minutes of the invasion? Why? If the stuff wasn't there? They did get there within 24 hours and didn't find the arsenal. Almost every member of the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, Congress, the U.N., and free nation in the world believed Saddam had WMD at the time of the invasion. Perhaps the U.S. troops had more to worry about in the first hours of invasion than one single facility.

But then Kerry would have secured it. Even though he wouldn't have invaded.

[/b]

Where did you hear this? Can you link me up please?

Yes you are missing something. The Iraqi's were moving material out of bunkers and putting them under camouflage. because the bunkers were targets. There is no information to suggest they were moving them out of the area. In fact they would be unlikely to do so due to time constraints, venerability during the process of moving, and difficultly of keeping track of it.

These were materials that could potentially become components of WMD's although they have both conventional weapons uses and civilian uses. As WMD's were the rational for our invasion, those explosives should have been a high priority.

Ticomaya It was in one of the NYT articles on the subject in the last several day's and also a CNN report (maybe; it could have been AP or other wire services reported on CNN). I do not know if they are all reporting from independent sources or quoting each other.

Thanks. If you see it again, would you post a link? I've not seen this reported before.

Here's another interesting story to add to the thread:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/iraq_us_explosives

Iraq says 'impossible' explosives taken before regime fall

1 hour, 21 minutes ago Mideast - AFP

BAGHDAD (AFP) - A top Iraqi science official said it was impossible that 350 tonnes of high explosives could have been smuggled out of a military site south of Baghdad before the regime fell last year.

The UN nuclear watchdog this week said about 350 tonnes of high explosives went missing from a weapons dump some time after Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime was toppled in April 2003 after the US-led invasion.

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."

Sharaa also warned that other nearby sites with similar materials could have also been plundered.

"The Al-Milad Company in Iskandariyah and the Yarmouk and Hateen facilities contained explosive materials that could have also been taken out," the official told AFP in an interview.

The Al-Qaqaa facility is near the town of Latifiyah, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Baghdad and the bulk of materials in question include HMX (high melting point explosive) and RDX (rapid detonation explosive), which experts say can be used in major bombing attacks, making missile warheads and detonating nuclear weapons.

The area in Babil province, which includes the towns of Iskandariyah and Mahmudiyah, used to be the centre of Saddam's military-industrial complex.

It is now one of the most dangerous parts of the country rife with crime, kidnappings and attacks. Several headless bodies hav been found in the area, according to marines stationed there.

"It may be already too late to salvage many of these sites, which are controlled by bandits and beyond the control of Iraqi forces," warned Sharaa.

Ticomaya, This is the NYT artice quote and link


Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq
By JAMES GLANZ, WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: October 25, 2004 New York Times

"Other HMX bunkers were untouched. Some were damaged but not devastated. I.A.E.A. experts say they assume that just before the invasion the Iraqis followed their standard practice of moving crucial explosives out of buildings, so they would not be tempting targets. If so, the experts say, the Iraqi must have broken seals from the arms agency on bunker doors and moved most of the HMX to nearby fields, where it would have been lightly camouflaged - and ripe for looting."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/international/middleeast/25bomb.html?pagewanted=3

Thanks, Acquiunk.

That's rather what I figured. IAEA assumptions and NY Times reporting...


What a wonderful combination a week before the election .....