Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq

Washington Post analysis: (Full story here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7418-2004Oct28.html?nav=rss_nation )



Munitions Issue Dwarfs the Big Picture

By Bradley Graham and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 29, 2004; Page A01

The 377 tons of Iraqi explosives whose reported disappearance has dominated the past few days of presidential campaigning represent only a tiny fraction of the vast quantities of other munitions unaccounted for since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government 18 months ago.

U.S. military commanders estimated last fall that Iraqi military sites contained 650,000 to 1 million tons of explosives, artillery shells, aviation bombs and other ammunition. The Bush administration cited official figures this week showing about 400,000 tons destroyed or in the process of being eliminated. That leaves the whereabouts of more than 250,000 tons unknown.

Against that background, this week's assertions by Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign about the few hundred tons said to have vanished from Iraq's Qaqaa facility have struck some defense experts as exaggerated.

"There is something truly absurd about focusing on 377 tons of rather ordinary explosives, regardless of what actually happened at al Qaqaa," Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an assessment yesterday. "The munitions at al Qaqaa were at most around 0.06 percent of the total."

Retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who served briefly as President Bush's adviser on counterterrorism and has criticized some aspects of the administration's performance, said yesterday he considered the missing-explosives issue "bogus."

Kerry has seized on the incident to press his charge that Bush mishandled the invasion of Iraq, failing, among other things, to secure sites containing dangerous Iraqi munitions, some of which were stored in bunkers marked with International Atomic Energy Agency seals to designate particular international concern.

Bush administration officials have refused to accept a statement issued earlier this month by a senior official of Iraq's interim government that the munitions disappeared after the April 9, 2003, fall of Baghdad "due to a lack of security." Iraqi authorities have not offered any supporting evidence, and Bush administration officials have suggested the explosives may have been removed earlier by Iraqi forces.

Several defense analysts said Kerry's focus on Qaqaa has resonated mainly because the explosives issue has become symbolic of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, especially its long-running insistence that it has a sufficient number of U.S. forces there.

"The issue has been out there for a long time," said James Bodner, who helped formulate Iraq policy in the Clinton-era Pentagon. "Are we properly manned to carry out the specific military tasks that need to be accomplished? If the answer is, 'Yes, we have enough troops,' then why are these facilities unguarded?"

Whatever the case, the military significance of the loss, in a country awash with far larger amounts of munitions, is open to question.

The most powerful of the three explosives -- HMX -- can be used in a trigger for nuclear devices, which is why it was placed under IAEA seal. But HMX is obtainable elsewhere, and the chief U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, Charles A. Duelfer, has acknowledged that the Iraqi stockpile posed no particular concern in this regard.

Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University expert in nuclear weapons and terrorism, said that although he is concerned by the removal of the explosives, he is far more worried by IAEA reports that large quantities of sophisticated equipment, such as electron beam welders, were looted and removed from Iraq's nuclear weapons program. "That material, which would be quite useful to a nuclear weapons program, was also well known to the United States, was not guarded and today is probably in hostile hands," with Iran being a likely recipient, said Bunn, who noted that he has been advising the Kerry campaign but does not speak for it.

HMX and the two other types of explosives reported missing from Qaqaa -- RDX and PETN -- could also be used in devices targeting U.S. forces in Iraq. But defense officials say the many car bombs and roadside explosive devices that have menaced U.S. forces and other foreigners in Iraq have tended to be constructed from old artillery shells and other munitions, which remain in ample supply in Iraq........

And Rudy the ex mayor of New York blames the troops. He did what Bush falsely claimed Kerry did. Rudy is just another phony
who has been playing off the 9/11 tragedy to make him a national figure. Bush and Rudy make perfect partners.

Just found this thread (thanks dlowan.) Interesting to read from the beginning...

And the Beat goes on.




OP-ED COLUMNIST

It's Not Just Al Qaqaa

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: October 29, 2004


Just in case, the right is already explaining away President Bush's defeat: it's all the fault of the "liberal media," particularly The New York Times, which, so the conspiracy theory goes, deliberately timed its report on the looted Al Qaqaa explosives - a report all the more dastardly because it was true - for the week before the election.

It's remarkable that the right-wingers who dominate cable news and talk radio are still complaining about a liberal stranglehold over the media. But, that absurdity aside, they're missing a crucial point: Al Qaqaa is hardly the only tale of incompetence and mendacity to break to the surface in the last few days. Here's a quick look at some of the others:

Letting Osama get away Just before the story about Al Qaqaa broke, the Bush-Cheney campaign was frantically trying to debunk John Kerry's statement that Mr. Bush let Osama bin Laden get away when he was cornered at Tora Bora. That getaway, Mr. Kerry asserts, was possible because the administration "outsourced" the job of closing off escape routes to local Afghan warlords.

In response, Gen. Tommy Franks claimed that we don't know that Osama was at Tora Bora, and, anyway, we didn't outsource the work of catching him. Dick Cheney called Mr. Kerry's claims "absolute garbage." But multiple reports from 2001 and early 2002 confirm Mr. Kerry's version. As Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert, writes, Mr. Kerry's charge is "an accurate reflection of the historical record."

Letting Zarqawi get away On Monday The Wall Street Journal confirmed an earlier report that in 2002 the military drew up plans for a strike on the base of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in an area of Iraq not under Saddam's control. But civilian officials vetoed the attack - probably because they thought it might undermine political support for the war against Saddam. So Mr. Zarqawi, like Osama, was given the chance to kill another day.

The situation in Iraq Dick Cheney is telling supporters that Iraq is a "remarkable success story." But the news from Iraq just keeps getting worse. After 49 Iraqi National Guard recruits were killed, execution style, even Ayad Allawi, the Iraqi prime minister - who usually acts as a de facto spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign - accused coalition forces of "gross negligence." It's now clear that the insurgency is much larger than U.S. officials initially acknowledged, and that Iraqi security forces have been heavily infiltrated.

$70 billion more Earlier this week The Washington Post reported that administration officials were planning to seek an additional $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan after the election. Whatever the precise number, it has long been obvious to knowledgeable observers that this was coming, but the news will come as a shock to many people who still don't realize how deep a quagmire Mr. Bush has gotten us into.

All of these stories would be getting more play right now if it weren't for the Al Qaqaa mess. Still, one can understand why the right is so upset.

After all, Al Qaqaa illustrates in a particularly graphic way the failures of Mr. Bush's national security leadership. U.S. soldiers passed through Al Qaqaa, a crucial munitions dump, but were never told that it was important to secure the site. If administration officials object that they couldn't have spared enough troops to guard the site, they're admitting that they went in without enough troops. And the fact that these explosives fell into unknown hands is a perfect example of how the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat.

The story of Al Qaqaa has brought out the worst in a campaign dedicated to the proposition that the president is infallible - and that it's always someone else's fault when things go wrong. Here's what Rudy Giuliani said yesterday: "No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?" Support the troops!

But worst of all from the right's point of view, Al Qaqaa has disrupted the campaign's media strategy. Karl Rove clearly planned to turn the final days of the campaign into a series of "global test" moments - taking something Mr. Kerry said and distorting its meaning, then generating pseudo-controversies that dominate the airwaves. Instead, the news media have spent the last few days discussing substance. And that's very bad news for Mr. Bush.

The photos of trucks removing materiel from the complex pre-war, the documentation of pre-war Iraqi/IAEA arrangements to convert substantial tonnage of the tagged explosives to "non-military use", and this morning's just announced disclosure that, beginning April 13, 3rd ID's Explosive Ordnance Disposal team moved and used at least a couple hundred tons of those tagged explosives in the routine destruction of other siezed munitionspretty much lets all the air out of The Kerry Kamp's argument on this one.

Is there a link for this?

Excerpts from today's New York Times article and link

MISSING EXPLOSIVES
Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: October 29, 2004 New York Times

A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.


The videotape , taken by KSTP-TV, an ABC affiliate in Minneapolis-St. Paul, shows troops breaking into a bunker and opening boxes and examining barrels. Many of the containers are marked "explosive." One box is marked "Al Qaqaa State Establishment," apparently a shipping label from a manufacturer.
The ABC crew said the video was taken on April 18. The timing is critical to the debate in the presidential campaign. By the Pentagon's own account, units of the 101st Airborne Division were near Al Qaqaa for what Mr. DiRita said was "two to three weeks," starting April 10.


"The photographs are consistent with what I know of Al Qaqaa," said David A. Kay, a former American official who led the recent hunt in Iraq for unconventional weapons and visited the vast site. "The damning thing is the seals. The Iraqis didn't use seals on anything. So I'm absolutely sure that's an I.A.E.A. seal."
One weapons expert said the videotape and some of the agency's photographs of the HMX stockpiles "were such good matches it looked like they were taken by the same camera on the same day.New York Times link

No link yet, Acquiunk; when I wrote that the press conference announcing the 3rd ID's EOD team's actions had just been announced, but had not yet occurred. The presentation is now under way.

Plenty of links are sure to follow when the conference is over.

10:27 a.m. Friday, October 29, the military commanders are on TV explaining how they did rout Iraqi forces at Al-qa-qaa and removed a large portion of the more dangerous explosives that were there. Yes, the stuff was taken....by US.

and they're explaining why they reported them missing in May 2003 how?

there's pretty much no way for them not to look stupid

The May report was obviously in error. There are still some unanswered question--the press conference ended a little bit ago--but the one who looks stupid is John Kerry with his rush to judgment. That isn't what I want from my president.

I would challenge the naysayers here to be in charge of a very large country with 8300 separate identified munitions dump, hundreds of tons of munitions scattered through the complex--we've already destroyed more than 400 tons of the stuff--and not misplace a single piece of paper or report or draw a wrong conclusion here and there.

What rush to judgement? If the May report was obviously in error -- that sucks. That's incompetent. That's not what I want from my commander in chief.

If it was just one mistake, maybe. But it's been way more than that, and it's that fact -- consistent, systematic mismanagement -- that is precisely the problem.

You have a country larger than California and Texas combined, 8300 munitions dumps and thousands more installations any of which could have contained WMD before we went and looked, more than 100,000 troops in the field going every which way, and you condemn an administration because there are errors in reporting. Wow, I sure would like to study your management style that is apparently able to achieve essentially absolute perfection from huge numbers of people all assigned different tasks. No screw ups. No miscommunications. No misreads. I haven't been able to accomplish that in my own family, much less among people I've supervised, but who knows. Maybe John Kerry is this genius who will pick people who are incapable of error.

Ooh, Soz, are you gonna take that?

(settles in to watch the fisticuffs)

The only one who is incapable of error or mistake is George Bush. How do i know. Cause he told us so. :wink:

To me what looks stupid is any perception that any of The Opposition's allegations in this matter enjoy any crediblility whatsoever. It appears clear to me that Kerry leaped to judgement and rushed to action in the abscence of supporting facts.

Questions remain, of course, and that is the nature of war. However, what is known is that Unscom lobbied for the destruction of the materiel at question from 1995 onward, but the IAEA declined to authorize that. The IAEA acceeded to pre-war Iraqi requests that a substantial amount of the materiel be rleased to "non-military" use. Satellite photos confirm the presence of heavy material handling and transport equipment at the site shortly prior to the opening of hostilities. The al-QaQaa site in April, at the time of the arrival of advance US combat units, was defended by relatively heavy Iraqi units and fell to US forces following a firefight conducted over a two-day period. When secured, the site underwent a preliminary examination, after action reports from which do not reference IAEA seals. Following the taking of the site, the roads in the area were for weeks literally clogged 24/7 with US logistic and combat convoys, the area was crawling with Coalition Forces, and under constant aerial surveilance and combat air patrol. No significant indigenous materiel transport was noted anywhere in the area during the time window at question. Beginning April 13, in excess of 200 tons of munitions were removed from the facility by US forces. The IAEA noted in May that the facillity no longer contained tagged material the presence of which they last had verified -or at least determined the seals were in place though it has been noted the seals were subject to easy circumvention - months previously, prior to the onset of hostilities. A few days ago, during the final week before the US election, the IAEA announces their May finding that the materiel no longer was accounted for. The Opposition siezed on the information and mounted a concerted attack based on evidence of at best questionable nature. Thats what we know.

There's timber again, muddying up opinions with facts.

So I guess that puts him on an equal footing with Bush, right? Oh wait, when Kerry did it, nobody died.

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/303/wash/WASHINGTON_AP_An_Army_unit_rem:.shtml

By Associated Press, 10/29/2004 13:05

WASHINGTON (AP) An Army unit removed 250 tons of ammunition from the Al-Qaqaa weapons depot in April 2003 and later destroyed it, the company's former commander said. A Pentagon spokesman asserted that some was of the same type as the missing explosives that have become a major issue in the presidential campaign.

But those 250 tons were not located under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency as the missing high-grade explosives had been and spokesman Larry Di Rita could not definitely say whether they were part of the missing 377 tons.

Maj. Austin Pearson, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon on Friday, said his team removed 250 tons of TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, and white phosporous rounds on April 13, 2003 10 days after U.S. forces first reached the Al Qaqaa site.

''I did not see any IAEA seals at any of the locations we went into. I was not looking for that,'' Pearson said.

Di Rita sought to point to Pearson's comments as evidence that some RDX, one of the high-energy explosives, might have been removed from the site. RDX is also known as plastic explosive.

But Di Rita acknowledged: ''I can't say RDX that was on the list of IAEA is what the major pulled out. ... We believe that some of the things they were pulling out of there were RDX.''

Further study was needed, Di Rita said.

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Seems not quite settled to me.